


What Was Taken, What Was Lost

by sunflowerseedsandscience



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case Fic, Child Loss, Developing Relationship, F/M, Ghosts, Post-Episode: s05e07 Emily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-10 14:16:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10439505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerseedsandscience/pseuds/sunflowerseedsandscience
Summary: Mulder and Scully, still reeling from the events of Christmas, 1997, go undercover as a honeymooning couple at a romantic retreat in upstate New York to investigate a series of suspicious suicides and accidental deaths.





	1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

David Tannahill wakes from a sound sleep into total confusion. First, because he doesn't typically wake in the middle of the night, not even when his wife's children are visiting and making noise at an ungodly hour. Second, because he's not in his bed at home... and third, because the room in which he's lying is bitterly, bitingly cold.

As his awareness sharpens, he takes in his surroundings- plush, four-poster bed, antique furniture, damask wallpaper- and remembers: he and Chelsea are on vacation, celebrating their fifth anniversary at Whitehall Manor. So that explains the furniture... but not the freezing temperature. He turns to Chelsea, to see if she's sleeping through whatever heater malfunction the resort is experiencing, and finds that she's not there.

Now truly confused, David sits up and grabs for his glasses on the nightstand, shoving them roughly onto his face. As the room comes into focus, the source of the plunging temperature is made immediately apparent. Across the room, the narrow French doors of the Romeo and Juliet-style balcony are standing wide open. Chelsea is standing motionless, clad only in her thin nightgown, staring out at the raging blizzard, snow and wind whipping her long hair into a frenzy.

"Chelsea, what the hell?" yells David, leaping out of bed. His wife makes no indication that she's heard him. She's not shivering, not doing anything, really, except staring off into the whirling snow, her head cocked slightly to the side, as though listening to distant music that only she can hear. David has never known Chelsea to sleepwalk, but he supposes it's possible that in the unfamiliar environment, her sleeping pattern has been altered. He begins to cross the room, intending to shut the door and gently guide his wife back to bed... but a sudden motion out of the corner of his eye stops him in his tracks.

A shadow moves across the full-length mirror standing in the corner of the room. David whirls around to see who's there, but the room is empty. Looking back, he sees Chelsea frowning slightly, as though listening to a persuasive argument, though David can hear nothing. Whatever the voice is saying, it seems convincing, however... because quite suddenly, Chelsea nods as if in agreement, climbs quickly onto the balcony railing, and dives off. Head first.

Halfway down, she comes back to herself, and begins to scream.

 

\-------------------------

CHAPTER ONE

 

"Suicides, Mulder. I don't see how suicides qualify as an X-File."

" _Five_ suicides, Scully, and four extremely odd accidental deaths, all at the same resort. And all since its opening less than five years ago." Mulder glances across the car at his partner, who is leaning against the window, looking listlessly out at the passing countryside, just as she had done for the entire ride to the airport. And for their flight from DC to Syracuse. _And_ the ride to Dulles Airport.

When it comes right down to it, "staring listlessly out the window" seems to be an apt description for Scully at any given moment, these days.

"They're still just suicides and accidents," Scully argues. "No hint of anything paranormal whatsoever."

"The husband of the most recent suicide reported seeing a shadow in the room, right before his wife dove off the third-floor balcony," Mulder points out, and Scully snorts derisively.

"Probably because he was worried the cops would assume that he pushed her," she says.

"Come on, you really don't think there's anything weird about this? A romantic getaway retreat opens up, and within five years, five guests- none of whom, I'd like you to note, showed the slightest hint of depression, mental illness, or suicidal tendencies prior to their visits- take their own lives."

"Sometimes people hide despair really well, Mulder," Scully counters. "The number of surviving family members taken completely by surprise by a suicide is relatively high."

"And on top of that," Mulder plows on, undeterred, "four other guests die in circumstances that are all bizarre, to say the least."

"Falling through thin ice isn't all _that_ bizarre," says Scully, flipping open the file on her lap to a page in the report.

"It's pretty bizarre when it happens in the middle of the night," says Mulder. "And even _more_ bizarre when the victim- who had no prior history of sleepwalking- wanders out onto the ice in his pajamas, directly from his hotel room." Scully bites her lip. "Or how about the woman electrocuted in her bathtub by a hair dryer that her husband swears up and down was plugged in on the dresser by the bed, and not on the bathroom vanity? Or the woman who got lost on a hike and froze to death within sight of the trail? Or how about the guy who went into the kitchen between meals and somehow managed to _set himself on fire?_ You don't think there's anything weird about _any_ of those?"

"All right, I'll concede that it's strange," sighs Scully, "but I still don't see why we have to go undercover for this investigation." She frowns down at the diamond on her left hand. "And I _really_ don't see why we have to do it as newlyweds." Mulder tries not to be offended at the distasteful expression she's giving her wedding band. His own isn't bothering him in the slightest; quite the opposite, actually.

 _"Are you two the parents?"_

The emotions that had shot through him at the ER doctor's question had come as a shock, almost as much of a shock as Scully's discovery of the little girl the doctor had been treating. Yes, he'd known he was love with Scully, had been for years... but the idea of sharing a child with her? It hadn't been something he'd ever considered before- at first, because he'd been so certain that she hadn't felt the same about him, and later, because he'd known it simply wasn't a possibility.

But suddenly, confronted head-on with the thought of raising that little girl with Scully....

 _Don't think about it,_ he tells himself firmly. _There's no point. Not now._

"We need to go undercover because the police suspect that an employee at the resort is somehow responsible for the deaths," Mulder says, "and we'll have a better chance of finding out whether that's true this way than we would if we just drove up and started questioning people. And since we're undercover...." He shrugs. "It's a resort that caters exclusively to couples, Scully. It'd look pretty weird if we posed as brother and sister, wouldn't you say?" He glances over at her and meets her eyes before she looks quickly away, her face red. "Hey," he says softly, reaching out and taking her hand. He's encouraged when she doesn't pull away. "I know this is kind of weird, okay?" 

"It's not weird," she says hastily, and he raises his eyebrows. "Well... maybe it's a _little_ weird," she admits, smiling weakly.

"Listen, just so you know, I'm not...." He bites his lip and looks away, out the windshield at the deserted rural highway, but doesn't let go of her hand. "I'm not expecting anything. When we're talking to the people at the resort, the guests and the employees, we're Eric and Danielle Foster, but in private, no matter how small our hotel room is, we're as professional as you want us to be." He risks a glance at her and finds her pursing her lips. "Or not professional at all. Or somewhere in between." She arches an eyebrow at him, and he realizes he's babbling. "What I'm saying is... it's up to you. All of it. I'll even sleep on the floor, if you want." He tugs her hand over to his side of the car, presses his lips briefly to the backs of her fingers, and releases her hand. He holds his breath, nervous that he's overstepped... and lets it out as she cups his cheek gently, then brings her hand back to her lap.

"Thank you," she whispers, and he grins at her, the tension broken. It's a difficult balancing act, this new path they've started down, and Mulder has had more than one occasion to wonder whether it had been wise to make this move now, with Scully's grief still so raw and fresh, so close to the surface. Every now and then, he worries that sooner or later, she's going to realize that she doesn't really want this, that she's only been seeking comfort this whole time, and that coming to his bed that night had been a colossal mistake.

But if that realization is in her future, it hasn't dawned yet, and while there hasn't been a repeat of that first night, she touches him more now, stands closer, invites him over to her apartment some evenings without the pretext of work, and once or twice, while walking down the street (far, far from the Hoover building and certainly not while on a case), she's slid her arm around his waist and leaned her head against him. And when he's put his arm around her shoulders, she hasn't shrugged it off.

"So we get there, we check in, and we start trying to speak with people right away?" she asks. Clearly she'd like to get back to the case, to more neutral and stable territory, and he's willing to meet her there.

"Well, provided we don't hit traffic, which is unlikely, and provided the snowstorm that's threatening holds off," Mulder says, gesturing to the ominous clouds above them, "we should arrive shortly before dinner. Which gives us an opportunity to start talking to the waitstaff, at the very least." Scully flips open the folder in her lap again.

"Most of the resort staff are students at St. Lawrence University, which is about twenty minutes away." Scully looks out her window, at the endless fields and woods they've been driving through for over an hour. "I guess in an area this rural, the opportunities for part-time work are few and far between." From within the file, she withdraws a map of the region, squinting at it. "Canton, New York. I've never even heard of it. It's so far north, it's practically in Canada."

"A buddy of mine from high school went to St. Lawrence," says Mulder. "He said he used to get so bored on weekends, he was tempted to _try_ to get arrested, just for a change of pace." Scully laughs.

"Small-town life," she says. "Can't say it's anything I've ever experienced. I'm so used to D.C. now, and before college, Dad was stationed in Norfolk and we were in the Washington suburbs, and of course before that it was San Diego-" She abruptly cuts off, looking away, and it's not hard to figure out why. San Diego is likely the last place she wants to think about right now, with memories of Emily so fresh in her mind. It's exactly why Mulder is glad for this case's location: the snowy fields of upstate New York are as far-removed as possible from the sunny beaches of San Diego. He casts about for something to say, but before he can think of anything, she continues. "Of course, the bases were sort of like small towns themselves, sometimes," she says. "In the way that everyone knew everything about everybody else. There were no secrets."

"That's the sort of small-town atmosphere I'm hoping for here," says Mulder. "If everybody knows everybody else, it's likely they know their animosities, their grudges, their feuds. Who's sleeping with whose spouse, and who has a drinking problem, or a drug problem, or issues controlling their temper." On his right, he sees the exit sign for Canton, and he takes it, hoping the directions he's gotten are accurate.

"Is this the part of the case that caught your attention, Mulder?" Scully asks, waving a piece of paper from the file. "These... sightings?" Mulder grins.

"You got me, Scully," he says. "Two sets of hotel guests reported encounters with an unknown entity. Alan and Patricia Farley, from Connecticut, were staying at Whitehall Manor during the first year it opened. They left after the first night, both claiming to have seen a spirit in their hotel room. And six months ago, Peter and Kelly Menendez were spending a week at the resort, and left halfway through."

"They had just lost a child," Scully comments quietly, reading over the report. Mulder winces: he hadn't wanted to bring the witness testimony up for just this reason. "Their baby daughter died three months prior to the trip. Sudden infant death syndrome."

"Yeah," says Mulder. "Mr. Menendez testified that the trip had been meant to give his wife time away from things. No guests under eighteen means no children, no babies." Scully nods. "Anyway," he continues, anxious to move away from the topic of dead children, "both couples reported seeing a strange, black shadow in their hotel rooms. The apparition had a fluid quality to it, but both couples reported that it had the vague shape of a woman, with long hair and glowing red eyes." He glances at Scully, who is frowning skeptically. "Two couples, four years apart, giving an almost identical description of a spirit in their hotel rooms? That can't be a coincidence. And I can guarantee you, other guests have seen it. These are just the two who were bold enough to say something to the owner about it."

"We should try and get their phone numbers," muses Scully. "It would be interesting to interview them by phone and see if their stories have changed at all."

"We might be able to get ahold of Mr. and Mrs. Menendez," says Mulder, "and we could probably find a number for Mr. Farley, but I don't know how willing he'd be to talk to us. His wife committed suicide not long after their stay at Whitehall." Scully raises her eyebrows.

"And I suppose you're going to tell me that the lingering effects of her encounter with this alleged spirit somehow drove her to do it, even though it didn't happen at the resort?" she asks.

"Uh, no," says Mulder. "Mrs. Farley's problems predated her and her husband's vacation." Scully is still looking at him expectantly, and he continues with great reluctance. "She, uh... there was a car accident, a few years before she ever came up here. The couple's two children were killed." He swallows. "Mrs. Farley was driving."

"Oh," says Scully. She closes the file sharply and goes back to looking out the window.

Whitehall Manor, it soon transpires, is so large that Mulder needn't have worried about being able to locate it. The resort is an imposing granite monstrosity, three stories tall, lined with tall, narrow windows. Some rooms have French doors leading to small balconies lined with flowerpots, empty in the winter chill. The driveway leads straight up to the front door, looping under a wide portico, where a valet attendant waits. Mulder pulls up and climbs out, and Scully does the same. She opens the trunk and makes to remove her suitcase, but a bellhop materializes from out of nowhere and beats her to the punch. The young man stacks their cases on his trolley and has them into the lobby before Mulder finishes giving the keys to the valet attendant.

"Fast service," he remarks to Scully, impressed, and she nods in agreement. He holds open the front door, his hand at the small of Scully's back... and after a moment, as the door swings shut behind him, he slides his hand from her back to her other hip. She looks up at him, eyebrows raised. "Newlyweds, remember?" he whispers, winking, and she blushes, but doesn't pull away.

A perky young woman who looks to be about college-age smiles at them as they approach the registration desk. "Welcome to Whitehall Manor!" she chirps. "My name is Sadie. Can I have your names, please?"

"Eric and Danielle Foster," says Mulder. "We have a reservation for a week's stay." Sadie scans the registration book and locates their names.

"Here you are," she says, reaching for a pen. "Oh! And I see that you're spending your honeymoon with us?" Mulder smiles widely and tightens his hold on Scully who, he's relieved to note, is smiling as well, and leaning into him. He feels her hand creep around his waist.

"That's right," he says. "Just tied the knot yesterday!"

"Congratulations!" says Sadie warmly. "You'll find a complimentary bottle of champagne in your room, compliments of Mr. Pekarcik."

"That's so kind," says Scully. "Is he the owner of the resort?" Sadie nods. "Please thank him for us."

"Oh, you'll have the chance to thank him yourself at dinner," Sadie assures them. "Mr. Pekarcik likes to greet all his guests personally on their first evening here." Mulder signs the guest register, then hands the pen to Scully. As she's signing, his attention is drawn to a display of brochures for local tourist attractions. He notices one on the history of Whitehall Manor and picks it up.

"Mind if I take one of these?" he asks Sadie.

"Please, help yourself!" she says. She hands Scully an old-fashioned brass key. "You'll be in room three-thirty-two, up on the third floor. Your bags should be waiting for you." Mulder thanks her, and with one arm still around Scully, they head for the stairs. He peruses the brochure as they go.

"Anything interesting in there?" asks Scully, as they start up. Mulder nods.

"This place has only been open as a romantic getaway for a little under five years, but the building is much older than that. It was built as a 'private health recovery resort' in 1902." Scully snorts. "What?"

"Out in the country, with this many rooms, in the early nineteen-hundreds, before the advent of antibiotics? They mean it was a sanitarium. For treating people suffering from tuberculosis." Mulder laughs.

"Yeah, I guess that doesn't read as well as 'private health recovery resort,'" he agrees. "Anyway, it was a sanitarium until 1931, when it was sold to the archdiocese of New York City and turned into a retreat for young Catholic women." He glances down at Scully, who gives him a knowing smile. "So basically, wealthy New York City families sent their daughters up here to avoid embarrassment when they found themselves... uh...."

"In trouble," Scully supplies. "So they shipped them up here for nine months, let the nuns lecture them on morality, adopted out the babies, and brought the mothers home when the danger for public humiliation had passed."

"Yup," agrees Mulder. "Then, in 1985, the archdiocese closed down the retreat due to lack of funding. It sat vacant for six years, until Gregory Pekarcik, a New York architect, bought it in 1992. He renovated it and re-opened it as a resort getaway for couples in the spring of 1993." They stop in front of room three-thirty-two, and Scully unlocks the door with the fancy brass key, pushing it open.

The room is spacious and well-appointed, with damask wallpaper, thick mauve carpeting, and furniture that Mulder is relatively certain is all antique. The bed is a massive four-poster, covered with a fluffy down quilt. A free-standing full-length mirror sits in the corner. Their room is one of those with a balcony, and beyond the tall, thin French doors, Mulder can see the snow-covered grounds, leading down to the lake, which is frozen over. Mulder notes the distance from the building to the water's edge: it's nearly two hundred yards. The man who had fallen through the ice, he reflects, would have had to have walked that entire distance barefoot, and then walked far enough out onto the ice to get to a point where he couldn't touch bottom. His feet would have been painfully, painfully cold. Had he been in some sort of a trance?

"Bathroom is nice," says Scully from behind him. "Big bathtub."

"Big enough for two?" Mulder asks, waggling his eyebrows, and Scully smiles at him.

"That bed definitely is," she says, nodding at the four-poster. "Which is a good thing, because there's no couch."

"I can take the floor, if you want," Mulder offers half-heartedly. "I bet we could request an extra quilt and I could use it as a sleeping bag."

"Why would I want that?" Scully asks. "It's fine, Mulder. It's a big bed. And it's not like we haven't shared one before." _Once_ , Mulder thinks, _and you were gone by morning_ , but he keeps that to himself.

"I know," he says out loud. He glances at his watch. "It's six-thirty. What do you say we head down to dinner?"

"Sounds good," she agrees, and follows him out of the room.

The dining room, on the first floor, is just as lovely as the rest of the hotel. It's spacious, with a marble floor, and a wall of windows that give a beautiful view of the lake and the surrounding woods. Outside, there's a patio that Mulder imagines allows people to dine out of doors, though it's covered in snow at the moment. They take a seat along the windows, and almost immediately, their server approaches.

"Good evening," he says. "My name is Damon, and I'll be your waiter tonight. Is this your first time with us?" Mulder nods.

"Yes, we're on our honeymoon," he says, and Damon's smile widens.

"Excellent!" he exclaims. He hands them each a menu. "Our specials tonight are at the top," he says. "The soup of the day is lobster bisque, and tonight, our chef is offering an excellent prime rib with mushroom gravy, duchess potatoes, and steamed asparagus with a butter sauce on top." 

"That sounds amazing," says Mulder. "I think I'll have that. Medium-rare, please." Damon turns to Scully.

"And you, ma'am?" he asks. "Would you also like to try the special?"

"I'll have the soup," says Scully, "but I'd like a moment to go over the menu, please." Damon gives them a shallow bow and leaves. Scully raises her eyebrows at Mulder. "That's a pretty rich dinner," she observes.

"Prime rib on the Bureau's dime, Scully," he whispers, though no one is seated near them. "How can I resist?" She smiles and shakes her head, then returns to scanning the menu. When Damon comes back, she orders the broiled flounder with, predictably, fresh vegetables, hold the butter sauce. The food arrives quickly, and it's so delicious that all conversation ceases while they eat it. When they're done, they both lean back in their chairs, and Mulder groans, his hands on his stomach.

"Jesus, that was amazing," he says, and Scully nods her agreement. Damon approaches, his order pad in hand.

"Will you be having dessert this evening?" he asks. Scully shakes her head, and Mulder does the same. He's too stuffed to eat another bite.

"Just coffee, please," he says.

"Was your meal satisfactory?" Damon asks as he tucks his order pad back in his apron.

"Absolutely," says Scully. "The food was incredible."

"Yeah, it's enough to make me glad we didn't cancel our reservation and take a cruise instead," says Mulder. He watches Damon's face carefully, and sure enough, the young man blanches ever so slightly. "You know, because of the rumors?"

"What rumors would those be, Sir?" Damon asks, frowning in confusion, but Mulder isn't fooled.

"You know, with all the weird deaths," he says. He leans closer to Damon. "I heard a rumor that this place is haunted, that people have seen ghosts here. You know anything about that?"

"Oh, all hotels have rumors," says Damon, with a nervous chuckle. Mulder looks skeptical.

" _You_ haven't seen anything weird, have you?" he asks, and Damon shakes his head.

"I'm pretty new here, Sir," he says. "I transferred to the local university last fall and started this job right after Christmas break." He bites his lip; then, after a moment's hesitation, he leans down ever so slightly. "But I heard," he says, his voice low, "that they have a really hard time keeping nighttime employees. Nobody wants to work the front desk in the middle of the night, because this one guy who used to do it said-"

"How are our latest guests doing?" asks a deep, booming voice, and Damon stands up straight, jumping back. "Is Damon here taking good care of you this evening?" A tall, lanky man with thinning brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses approaches their table.

"He's been excellent," says Scully warmly. "And the food has been just amazing." The man beams.

"Glad to hear it," he says. "I'm Gregory Pekarcik, the owner of Whitehall Manor." He shakes Mulder's hand, then Scully's.

"Good to meet you," he says. "I'm Eric Foster, and this is my wife, Danielle." Damon, looking anxious to be gone, gives them another bow.

"Let me go get your coffee," he says, and rushes off. Mulder is tempted to try the same line of questioning with Mr. Pekarcik, but he doesn't want to get Damon in trouble for circulating rumors- especially not when it's clear the young man has heard something that could be useful. He gives Mr. Pekarcik a broad smile.

"This place is beautiful," he says. "You bought it in 1992?"

"That's right," says Mr. Pekarcik. "My architectural firm made me plenty of money in New York, but I'd always wanted to own a bed and breakfast when I was ready to retire. I grew up in Canton, so I've known about this place my whole life, and when my parents called me and told me the bank was thinking about tearing it down because nobody wanted to buy it, I figured, why settle for just a bed and breakfast when I could have an entire hotel?"

"That seems like a pretty busy retirement," comments Scully.

"I like to keep busy," says Mr. Pekarcik agreeably. "I always knew I wouldn't be spending my retirement playing golf and lounging on the beach. This suits me much better." He shakes both of their hands again. "Well, I won't keep you from the rest of your meal. If you need anything, if you have any problems or complaints, please, ask for me at the front desk. I live here at the manor, so I'm always on-hand if something comes up."

"We will, thank you," says Mulder, and Mr. Pekarcik leaves.

Back in their room, someone has set out a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice, along with two crystal champagne flutes. Scully picks up the bottle and reads the label.

"Dom Perignon," she says, impressed. "Not something I have that often, on my budget." She returns it to the bucket of ice with a regretful sigh. "Of course, we can't drink on the job," she says regretfully.

"Why don't we take it off the ice," Mulder suggests, "and when it's back to room temperature, we'll pack it in your suitcase and take it home with us." He smiles. "We can use it to celebrate the end of the case once we solve it and go home."

"A night with you, drunk on expensive champagne," Scully muses, blushing slightly. "Could be interesting." Mulder's grin widens.

"I can think of a few other potential ways to describe it," he says, and Scully's blush deepens. He takes the bottle of champagne out of the ice, carries it into the bathroom, and places it on the marble countertop to warm up, then returns to Scully, who's regarding the bed, lost in thought.

"Do you... uh... do you have a side?" she asks. "Of the bed?"

"You're talking to a guy who spends most nights on the couch," Mulder chuckles.

"Not when we're on the road," Scully counters. "In hotels, then. Do you have a side you prefer?"

"Nope," he says. "I'll sleep wherever you put me. How about you?"

"Left side, please," Scully says. She retrieves her reading glasses and a book from her suitcase and places them on the left-hand nightstand, then turns back to him. "I'm going to take a bath before bed, if that's all right," she says shyly. Mulder thinks, for a moment, about offering to keep her company- he's seen the tub, and it's _definitely_ big enough for two- but somehow, he doesn't think that's what Scully has in mind just now.

"Of course it's all right," he assures her, and she disappears into the bathroom.

By the time she returns, clad in silk pajamas, her hair slightly damp at the bottom, Mulder is relaxing in bed in a t-shirt and boxers, his notes from the case on his lap. Scully hangs her towel on the coat tree in the corner, then goes around to the left side of the bed and climbs in, stretching out on her back under the thick, warm covers.

"Tired?" Mulder asks, and she nods, looking up at the ceiling.

"Yeah," she admits. "But you can keep reading, if you want. It won't bother me."

"Nah, that's all right," he says, gathering up the papers and returning them to the folder. He places them on the nightstand and switches off the reading light, plunging the room into darkness. With the moon outside hidden behind the clouds, the light filtering in is dim, blue from its reflection off of the snow and the frozen lake. Mulder can't make out Scully, lying next to him, but he can feel her warmth, can smell her familiar scent and hear her slow, measured breaths.

"Mulder?" she asks quietly, after a few minutes of silence.

"Yeah?"

"Did you...." She pauses, as though formulating her question. Scully gives weight and thought to every word; it's one of the things he's always loved about her... but sometimes, like now, the suspense is agonizing. "Did you choose this case for the same reason as Peter Menendez? Because you knew there wouldn't be any children here?" Mulder's breath catches.

"It's not why I chose the case, no," he says carefully. "Though that did strike me as a potential perk." She sighs.

"You can't protect me from this forever, Mulder," she tells him. "I'm going to see other people's children every single day for the rest of my life. There's no escaping that."

"I know that, Scully," he says. "And I'm not trying to protect you from it... not forever, anyway. I just thought... for our first case back... that maybe this would be ideal." He swallows. "For both of us." 

It's the closest he's come to admitting just how deeply Emily's death had affected him. He's been cautious in his grief, afraid that Scully might take offense at his heartbreak over a child that wasn't his to mourn. She hasn't wanted to talk about it, and he hasn't pushed the issue... but it's been on his mind almost constantly, and he knows damn well it's been on hers.

The covers rustle softly, and Scully's hand creeps into Mulder's, her fingers lacing with his. She gives his hand a squeeze.

"Thank you, Mulder," she whispers. They drift off to sleep not long later, their hands still clasped under the blankets.

Outside, the snow begins to fall.


	2. Chapter 2

The chill is what wakes Mulder, along with the sounds of the storm outside, much louder than they should be from inside the hotel room. He sits up, shivering, and sees that across the room, the French doors to the balcony are standing ajar. The blizzard is still going strong outside, and the wind is blowing snow into the room. Mulder leaps out of bed and runs over, stubbing his toe on the leg of the bed and swearing loudly, and pushes the doors closed again, latching them securely.

Stepping back, he rubs his hands over his unclothed arms. While the room is frigid, the carpet beneath his bare feet isn't very wet, which tells him that the doors couldn't have been open long, otherwise much more snow would have blown in. The latch is a secure one, and an experimental jiggle of the handle reveals that it's not loose. Did whoever closed it last not pull it completely shut, allowing the wind to blow it open? He doesn't remember Scully opening it at any point since their arrival, and he knows that _he_ hadn't opened it. Maybe housekeeping had failed to latch it properly?

As he's standing there thinking, staring out into the whirling flakes, there's a soft snuffle from the bed, and he turns to look at Scully. She's fast asleep, curled on her side facing outward, and the covers have slipped down to her waist. _She'll be cold,_ Mulder thinks to himself, and he tiptoes quietly to her side and pulls the blankets up over her shoulders, tucking them gently around her. She sighs softly in her sleep, and he smiles.

_Thump._

He jumps at the sound, which he thinks came from the hallway. It's not a particularly loud noise; it's as though something has been dropped on thick carpeting. He wonders if another guest, wandering the halls at night, is out there... but he hears no footsteps. Frowning, he crosses to the door and eases it open, sticking his head out into the hallway.

The hallway is dim, lit only by the flickering faux-candle light bulbs in their brass fixtures, casting an orange glow on the green walls below them. Ten feet away, a framed painting lies upside-down in the middle of the mauve carpeting, as though something has knocked it off the wall. He looks both ways, but the hallway is empty. 

Mulder glances back at Scully, making sure she's still fast asleep, and takes a tentative step out into the deserted hallway... only to be brought up short by a gust of wind that blows through their room's open door. He whirls back, expecting to see the French doors standing open again, but they remain firmly closed and latched. Suddenly, he feels the hairs along the back of his neck stand up. Something about this is not right, and in his sleep-befuddled haze, it takes him a moment to realize: that cold blast of air came from the hallway, not from the window. He jerks himself back through the door, slamming it behind him and whirling around, leaning his back against it, feeling his heart race in his chest.

A shadow moves across the mirror in the corner. Mulder whips around to face it, but by the time he looks, there's nothing there. He approaches the mirror on shaky legs, half-expecting something to leap out at him through the glass, but there's nothing... until the sound of rustling covers from the bed makes him turn. Scully has shifted onto her back in her sleep, one arm thrown above her head on the pillow.

A black figure is bending over her.

It has the shape of a woman in a high-necked dress, her long hair blowing in an unseen breeze. She seems to bleed at the edges, like black ink spilling into a pool of water, grey tendrils fading into the surrounding air. Mulder freezes in place. He wonders if he should shout, wake Scully up, demand that the figure back off... but she seems to only want to watch Scully sleep, and though it's difficult to make out the expression on her face as her features blur and shift, he senses no malevolence, no ill intent. The woman seems almost tender as she leans down over Scully.

But then Mulder moves, and the woman straightens up and looks at him, and suddenly, she's nothing resembling tender.

The fine features of her face melt away, leaving behind flat, dead black stretched across her skull, her nose a rotten hole, her mouth a gaping chasm. Her eyes burn red like glowing coals in their recessed sockets, radiating a hatred and fury so strong that he can feel it from across the room. She advances on him, a strangled snarl ripping out of her throat, and Mulder stumbles back with a startled cry. His back strikes the mirror, which rotates on its stand, the top of the frame striking the wall behind it with a loud _thwack._ Mulder falls to the floor, his arms held protectively over his head as he lands hard on his hip, the bottom edge of the mirror striking him at the base of his skull.

The room is suddenly blindingly bright, and for a moment Mulder thinks it's because of the blow he's just taken to his head, until he hears Scully's voice, still muzzy with sleep and confusion.

"Mulder?" She's sitting up in bed, squinting at him from across the room, her hand on the bedside lamp switch. "What are you doing?" He doesn't answer, looking around the room, panicked, but it's empty except for the two of them. He tries to stand, but the world sways around him and he stumbles into the wall, clutching his head, moaning. Scully's out of bed and by his side in seconds, helping him to sit back down on the floor.

"Mirror hit my head," he mumbles, his eyes still darting around the room, expecting the woman to reappear. Scully begins to probe carefully at his head, her fingers digging through his hair, checking for injuries. "Back there," he directs her, gesturing vaguely to the back of his head, where a steady, painful pounding has begun. She gently coaxes him to lean forward, and he drops his head down as she runs her fingers along the bottom of his hairline. His eyes are closed, and when she locates the spot where the mirror had struck him, he yelps and opens them to find Scully's breasts only inches from his face.

The pain is suddenly forgotten as Scully's unique scent fills his nostrils, calming him and soothing his nerves as it always does... or, at least, as it always did, _before_ the night she had sat astride him on his motel room bed. He'd had this exact same vantage point that night, except that then, there had been no pajama top between him and the source of that scent. His mind is suddenly assaulted with the memory of her breasts bouncing tantalizingly in his face, and he inhales sharply.

"Yeah, I bet that _does_ hurt," Scully says, mistaking his gasp of arousal for a sound of pain. "You're gonna have a pretty good lump back there." She rests back on her knees and pushes on his shoulders until he's sitting upright, leaning back against the wall, closing his eyes against the dizziness brought on by the change in position. When he hears her chuckling, he squints at her, finding her looking down at his boxers, her eyebrows raised in amusement. "Guess you can't be hurt _that_ badly, if that particular reflex is intact," she says. "What on earth happened?" Her question immediately jogs his memory, and he tries, again, to climb to his feet, looking around the room in terror, nearly losing his balance again. Scully ducks under his arm to support him, helping him across the room.

"I saw it, Scully," he says, once he's satisfied that the room is still empty, though it continues to spin as he staggers towards the bed. Scully helps him sit down in the spot she'd vacated minutes earlier.

"Saw what?" she asks.

"The spirit. The ghost." He looks up at her, knowing exactly the expression that's going to greet his statement, and she does not disappoint. She sighs and crosses her arms.

"Mulder, you withstood a pretty hard knock there," she says patiently. "Hard enough that the noise woke me up. It's not surprising that you might have hallucinated for a moment." He shakes his head, but that's still painful, and he stops immediately.

"No, that's _why_ I hit my head," he explains. "It was right there, standing right where you are now. It was- _she_ was watching you sleep."

"Watching me sleep," Scully repeats, her tone flat, here eyebrow arched. Mulder nods.

"It was exactly like the other guests said it was," he insists. "The Farleys, and the Menendezes. It was a woman. Long hair. Red eyes." He shudders at the memory. "Well, red when she was looking at me, anyway."

"But not when she was looking at me?"

"No," Mulder says. "When she was watching you, she was just... a woman. A spirit of some sort, obviously, but still just a woman." He frowns, remembering the spirit's face. "She looked almost sad while she was watching you. Mournful." He can't quite put it into words, the sorrow on the woman's face, the heartbreak that had been somehow familiar. He wonders, briefly: is that what _he's_ looked like, these past few weeks, when he's looked at her, when he's watched her trying to hide away her pain?

"And when she looked at you, she... changed?"

"Completely," Mulder confirms. "I stepped towards the bed, and she turned towards me. One minute, she was a woman, and the next... she was a monster."

"I can almost sympathize. Sometimes you have the same effect on _me_ , Mulder." She turns away and digs into her bag atop the vanity, withdrawing a penlight, turning back to him, and switching it on. "What were you doing on the other side of the room, anyway?" she asks, shining the light into his right eye, checking to make sure it dilates appropriately. "Coming back from the bathroom?"

"No," he says, as she checks his left eye, then shuts off the light. "I woke up because the balcony door was open." 

"That explains why it's so cold in here," Scully says. She holds up a finger, moving it back and forth, and he follows it with his gaze without being told. It's not the first, or even the fiftieth time she's had to do this for him, and he knows the routine by heart by now. "So you closed it. Then what?" Mulder explains how he'd heard the noise in the hallway and seen the fallen painting, how he'd felt the strange wind that had had no obvious source, how he'd glimpsed the shadow in the mirror and had turned to see the woman hovering over Scully.

"And the second I stepped forward," he finishes, "she changed. She came at me and made this... this _sound_... like a growl and a scream together, but not really, and I fell back into the mirror and woke you up." Scully purses her lips thoughtfully. She turns and puts the penlight away in her bag, then sits next to him on the bed.

"It _sounds_ ," she says, "as though the door blew open, which, understandably, woke you up... but not all the way. You closed it, but you were still mostly asleep, and you thought you heard a noise- or maybe you did; there are other people in this hotel, after all- and you looked outside, and when you came back in, you-"

"I wasn't dreaming, Scully," Mulder insists, cutting her off. "I know that's what you're going to say, and that's _not_ what happened. I was wide awake. I saw her, and she looked _exactly_ the way the witnesses described her."

"I think you saw her that way because that's what you _expected_ to see, Mulder," says Scully. "Your subconscious took the image you'd read in the case file and ran with it." Mulder continues to shake his head emphatically.

"I promise you, Scully, I was wide awake. I'm absolutely sure of what I saw." Scully crosses her arms and purses her lips. She glances at the alarm clock on the bedside table.

"Well, we can't go wandering off looking for it at almost three in the morning," she says with a sigh. "Not if you have a head injury."

"I'm fine, Scully," Mulder says dismissively. "No concussion, right?"

"It's unlikely, but I can't be certain," Scully says. "One way or another, you're not going ghost-hunting right this second, and neither am I. You're going to lie down and get some sleep, and I'm going to wake you every hour to make sure you're still responsive." She pushes him gently, making him lie down in the space she'd vacated minutes before, pulling the quilt up over him. She switches off the light, goes around to the other side of the bed, and climbs in.

"You won't need to," Mulder tells her. "It's just a bump, Scully. I didn't get hit that hard."

"It was hard enough to make you hallucinate," Scully says, and Mulder groans in frustration.

"I already told you, I fell and got hit by the mirror _because_ of seeing the spirit. _Not_ the other way around. Why can't you believe me?" Scully sighs.

"Get to sleep, Mulder," she tells him wearily. "I'll be waking you up before you know it."

"It'll be completely unnecessary," says Mulder, glancing across the room into the mirror, half-expecting to see a shadow flitting across it again. "There's absolutely no way I'm getting back to sleep after seeing that." He rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling, glowing pale blue in the dim light from the windows. The bedclothes rustle to his left, and moments later, Scully is pressed against his side. She slips one warm hand under his t-shirt.

"I think I might be able to help you get to sleep," she whispers, her lips brushing his ear, and a shiver runs through him. He rolls on his side, reaching for her, sliding his hand along her neck, palming the back of her head, and brings her lips to his. Scully slides her leg up and over his hip. Mulder starts to roll her onto her back... and then stops. Reluctantly, he breaks the kiss.

"What's wrong, Mulder?" Scully asks, frowning at him. In the dim light, he can make out confusion- and no small amount of hurt- in her expression, as, gently, he removes her hand from under his shirt and holds it between both of his own.

"Scully," he says, "I don't want this to be just something we do when I want to talk about something and you don't." She freezes, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

"What are you talking about?" she asks in a low voice.

"Right now, I want to tell you about what I saw, and you want to dismiss it."

"Mulder, just because I don't want to argue about the plausibility of the existence of spirits or ghosts or what have you at three in the morning does _not_ mean that I-"

"And the last time," Mulder continues, talking over her, "you stopped me from asking-"

"Mulder, don't-"

"From asking you how you were coping-"

"Mulder, I'm warning you-"

"How you were coping with losing Emily." Scully's eyes close, and she yanks her hand forcefully out of his grasp.

"You're suggesting that I'm using sex to shut you up," she accuses, and Mulder shakes his head.

"I'm not suggesting it, Scully," he says. "I'm saying that it's _exactly_ what you're doing. And I don't want it to be that way between us." He tries to recapture her hand, but she backs away. "I feel like we could be more than that. _So_ much more." She rolls on her back, shaking her head.

" _We_ don't have to be anything at all," she says. "Not if that's how you see me." Anger boils up in Mulder's chest. He clenches his jaw, adding to the already-pounding headache leftover from his encounter with the mirror. The words are leaving his lips before he can stop them.

"Fine," he says. "Don't talk to me. Keep on pretending you're totally alone in this."

"I'm not pretending, Mulder," Scully snaps. "I _am_ alone in this."

"If you really believe that, Scully," sighs Mulder, rolling away from her, "then I don't know what to tell you."

She's silent after that. Mulder opens his mouth to speak once, twice, three times, but loses his nerve each time, and finally, Scully's breathing becomes deep and even. When he's certain she's asleep, he rolls back over, being careful not to move the mattress, not to wake her, and curls up on his side, facing her. The pillow he's lying on, where she had rested her head until he'd woken her up, still smells like her, and it comforts him, being surrounded by her essence as he watches her sleep.

He's never known how to convince her to let him in. Even when she'd had cancer, when she'd been half a breath from the end of her life, she had preferred to suffer through it alone, never letting her stoic facade crack. He's been trying for years to gain access to her heart, and while she's opened up to him somewhat, in the smallest of increments, she still snaps closed the moment grief begins to overwhelm her.

He watches her in the darkness, inhaling her sweet fragrance, fighting to keep his hands from stroking her cheek, her hair. She'd set the alarm to wake her in one hour, to check on him, and when it rings, she opens her eyes as he's turning it off. She rolls to face him and sees that he's awake. They watch one another cautiously, saying nothing, until she reaches for his hand. Wordlessly they intertwine their fingers, and they lie still gazing at one another until she drifts back to sleep.

 

\-------------------------

 

"We should split up for a little while after breakfast," Scully suggests as Mulder steps out of the bathroom. "Talk to some guests, talk to some employees, see what we can find out. We'll cover more ground that way." Mulder nods his agreement. They're slightly tense after the previous night, but as always, they've reached an unspoken agreement not to talk about it. She straightens her hair at the vanity as he buttons up his shirt, and when they're both dressed, he extends his hand to her with a smile.

"Ready, Honey?" he asks, and she rolls her eyes, but consents to holding his hand as they walk downstairs. Their server this morning is a young woman named Valerie, but the dining room is far too busy for her to linger by their table long enough for them to ask her any questions. And in any case, Mulder points out, the daytime employees are less likely to have seen anything strange, since most of the reported activity seems to occur at night.

"I'm going to go mingle with the other guests," says Scully as they leave the dining room, nodding towards the enormous common area to the left of the lobby. There's a fire roaring in the hearth, and numerous couples are sitting in groups around tables all over the room, talking, playing board games, and relaxing, watching the storm continuing to batter the grounds outside.

"Sounds good," Mulder agrees. "I'm gonna go bother the guy at the reception desk. Even if he doesn't work nights, he might have heard something from someone who does... or at least he can point me in the right direction." He bends to kiss Scully on the cheek before she can object, and with an expression that says all to clearly that she's just barely suppressing a roll of her eyes, she leaves for the common room.

The young man at the front desk smiles as Mulder approaches. 

"Can I help you with something, Sir?" he asks. His name tag reads "Evan," and like nearly every other employee here, he looks to be in his early twenties.

"Yeah, actually," says Mulder, leaning on the counter. "I'm real interested in the history of this hotel. My wife and I have heard some pretty strange rumors." Evan's smile falters slightly, but he recovers immediately.

"Oh, all hotels have their rumors," he says genially. It's almost the exact same thing that Damon had said at dinner the night before, and Mulder suspects that this is what all of the hotel employees have been told to say whenever guests reference the strange goings-on.

"Sure, sure," Mulder says with a wave of his hand. "But not all hotels have ghosts, do they?"

" _I've_ never seen a ghost here," Evan says, chuckling. "But, then, I only work a few mornings a week, and only at the reception desk, and I've never heard of a ghost that checks in at the front desk before haunting a hotel!" Mulder laughs.

"No, I guess that if there _were_ a ghost, it wouldn't be likely to show up first thing in the morning, huh?" He shakes his head. "But how about the night clerks? Any of them ever see anything weird?"

"I wouldn't know anything about that, Sir," says Evan. "The guy I replace in the mornings is always in a big hurry to get home, but I would be, too, if I'd been here all night and only had a few hours to sleep before my afternoon classes."

"This place has only _been_ a hotel for a few years, am I right?" Mulder asks, and Evan nods. "And before that it was a home for Catholic girls, and before that it was some sort of hospital."

"That's correct, Sir," Evan says. "I take it you've read our brochure?"

"I have," says Mulder. "And it seems to me that if there _were_ a ghost haunting the halls here, it probably would have come from some time _before_ the building became a hotel, wouldn't it?"

"I guess that makes sense," Evan concedes. "But I'm afraid I don't know too much about the building's history, beyond what's in the brochure. You'd have to have a look at our library for that." Mulder brightens at this.

"You've got a library?" he asks. "With stuff on the building's history?"

"Oh, yeah," says Evan, glad to have a question he can answer without worrying about getting in trouble with his boss. "It's got all kinds of stuff that Mr. Pekarcik saved when he bought the building. Guest books from when it was a health retreat, account ledgers, delivery records, the admissions records the men from the archdiocese left behind. It's all organized, really easy to navigate. Mr. Pekarcik is really big on the building's history."

"I'd really like to see that," says Mulder. "Where can I find this library?"

"It's a room just to the left of the stairs on the second floor," says Evan. "It's got glass double doors. You can't miss it." Mulder smiles.

"Evan, you've been a huge help," he says, and Evan smiles happily, clearly relieved that Mulder has not continued to pump him for rumors.

"Glad to have been of service," he says, and Mulder goes to find Scully.

She's sitting on a love seat near the fire, across from a middle-aged couple relaxing on a sofa. She smiles up at him as he approached.

"There you are, Jason," she says, patting the empty space beside her. He sits, sliding an arm around her shoulders and pulling her flush against himself, kissing her temple, taking the opportunity to touch her and love her while he can, while he's expected to. Scully turns to the couple sitting across from her. "This is my husband, Eric. Eric, this is Amy and Stephen Thibodeau. They were just telling me that they've spent a week here every year since the hotel opened." Mulder’s face lights up.

“Nice to meet you!” he says, shaking hands with the couple.

“Likewise,” says Stephen. “Danielle was saying that this is your first time here?”

“That’s right,” says Mulder, giving Scully a squeeze and a beaming smile. “We thought about going somewhere tropical on our honeymoon, you know, to escape the winter weather, but then we thought: what could be more romantic than curling up together in front of the fire while a snowstorm rages outside?”

“That’s exactly how we feel,” says Amy, gazing up at her husband. “Our friends pay an arm and a leg to go on a cruise or a beach vacation every few years, and for a fraction of that cost, we come up here every winter and have a lovely time.”

“So you guys must have all the dirt on this place, huh?” Mulder asks, getting right to the point. “I was just trying to get the clerk at the front desk to dish, and he wouldn’t do it. Gave me the same line our waiter gave us at dinner last night.”

“Let me guess,” says Stephen. “’Every hotel has its rumors.’ Right?”  
“Word for word,” says Mulder, and Scully nods her agreement. “But I heard, from a co-worker who stayed here once and recommended the place, that it’s haunted.” Stephen and Amy exchange a look. “Have _you_ guys ever seen anything weird?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” says Stephen. “We’ve heard all kinds of stories about the ghost, of course, even if we haven’t ever seen anything ourselves. But we _were_ staying here when a freak accident took place, two years ago.”

“Really?” Scully asks, leaning forward. “What sort of accident?”

“A guy burned to death in the hotel kitchen,” says Stephen. Mulder and Scully both manage a convincing gasp of horror.

“How awful,” says Scully. “Was it a cooking fire?”

“No, it wasn’t,” says Amy. “And that’s the weird thing: it wasn’t one of the chefs or the servers. It wasn’t even an employee.”

“A _guest_ died in a kitchen fire?” asks Mulder, and Amy and Stephen nod.

“That’s what made it so bizarre,” says Amy. “Nobody has any idea what he was doing in there. It was the middle of the night, and the kitchen door should have been locked. And there was no food out or anything, so he didn’t wake up hungry and try to cook himself a meal. As far as they could tell, he turned on the burners on one of the stoves and just… leaned over too far.”

“His wife didn’t even know he’d gotten out of bed until the fire alarm went off,” Stephen says. “We were all outside in our pajamas, waiting for the fire department to arrive, and she was rushing all over, screaming his name, trying to find him.”

“It was horrific,” says Amy. “Especially when the EMTs arrived and they brought him out. He died on the way to the hospital, but when they wheeled him out to the ambulance, he was still screaming. Totally incoherent, yelling about red eyes, eyes on fire, something like that. Made no sense.” Mulder’s pulse quickens in excitement, and he glances down at Scully, who is frowning.

“He was yelling that _his_ eyes are on fire?” she asks, and Stephen and Amy shake their heads.

“He was screaming that he’d _seen_ someone with red eyes,” says Stephen. “Which fits in with the rumors, of course. Everyone who claims to have seen the ghost describes it one of two ways.”

“How’s that?” asks Mulder eagerly.

“Either as a woman in a black dress, with a mournful expression,” says Stephen, “or as a black phantom with glowing red eyes.” Mulder just barely manages to contain his smile of triumph as he glances down at Scully, who is still looking skeptical.

“And a lot of people have seen it? Or her, or whatever they think it is?” she asks.

“We hear from someone who’s seen her every year,” says Amy. “I’m glad we haven’t seen the red-eyed version, because that sounds absolutely terrifying- most of the people who see _that_ seem to cut their trip short and check out early- but I’ll admit, I’d kinda like to see the lady in the black dress.” She looks a little sheepish. “I’m really into ghost stories, the paranormal, that sort of thing.” Her husband smiles down at her affectionately.

“So is Eric,” says Scully, laying a hand on his thigh (making him shiver at the unexpected touch) and grinning up at him. “Some of our friends thought that we might cancel our trip when my colleague told Eric that this place might be haunted, but really, that just made him want to extend our stay!” She and Stephen exchange a smile of solidarity, then Stephen turns to his wife.

“Well, Sweetie, what do you say we go get our breakfast before the kitchen closes?” he asks Amy, standing and holding out his hand, which Amy takes as she rises.

“It was very nice to meet you,” she says, as Stephen slides an arm around her waist. “You guys are here for a week?”

“Until next Sunday,” says Mulder. “Unless, of course, I catch a glimpse of this supposed ghost, in which case, we’re staying another week.” Scully doesn’t hold back on rolling her eyes this time as Amy and Stephen laugh.

“We’ll see you around, then,” says Stephen, and he escorts Amy back out to the lobby. Mulder turns to Scully with a smug smile.

“Red eyes, Scully,” he says, keeping his voice low.

“ _Danielle_ ,” she hisses. “And it proves nothing. All it takes is one person to claim they’ve seen something, and hysteria kicks in. Put a suggestible person in an unfamiliar environment, tell them a scary story about a ghost with red eyes, and there’s every chance they’ll think they’ve seen it before the night is over.”

“And how about seen the woman with the mournful expression?” Mulder demands. “We’d heard about the red eyes before we got here. But the report said nothing about an unhappy-looking woman… and yet, I saw her. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t,” Scully admits. “But I’m still not going to accept it as fact unless I see it with my own eyes. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do,” says Mulder. “Maybe tonight will be the night.”

“Maybe,” Scully concedes. “But until then, what do you want to do?”

“Well,” says Mulder, standing and pulling Scully to her feet, “I think I might know where to go to find you a little of that hard evidence you love so much.” Scully raises her eyebrows.

“Oh?” Wrapping an arm around her waist, Mulder leads her back to the lobby.

“Yeah,” he says. “I got a tip from the desk clerk. I say before we do anything else, we find out all we can about the history of this place.”


	3. Chapter 3

The library, it transpires, is a converted guest room in exactly the same shape as their own, a floor above, complete with its own bathroom and balcony. But instead of a bed, dresser, and vanity, this room is full of wall-to-wall bookshelves, with a love seat, coffee table, and two wing-back chairs on an Oriental carpet in the center. The wooden door that divides all of the other hotel rooms is absent here, replaced by a set of handsome glass doors, which are unlocked, though no one is in the library at the moment.

"Is this all hotel history?" Mulder muses, following Scully into the room. She shakes her head.

"Looks like fiction on this wall," she says, gesturing to the space between the bathroom door and the corner, where the balcony is located. Sure enough, Mulder can see some fairly recent releases, surrounded by well-worn paperbacks and older editions of classic works. He crosses the room, to the expanse of shelving to the right of the balcony.

"Nonfiction over here," he says. "Lots of history... lots of books about the history of New York State, in particular." He turns around and grins. "Jackpot," he says, returning to the wall that holds the door to the hallway. The books on these shelves are older, less uniform in their sizes. He and Scully scan them, looking for something helpful. Mulder's eyes fall on what looks like a three-ring binder, and he pulls it down, flipping open the cover.

"It's a scrapbook," says Scully, as he pages through the assembled photographs and newspaper clippings. "Of the hotel, when it was a sanitarium." Mulder nods, and together, they page through the binder. There are brochures advertising the sanitarium, though none of them name it as such, or even call it a hospital. Clearly, the facility had been an exclusive one, a place for the wealthy to rest and recover without the public embarrassment of admitting that they, too, could suffer from the same diseases as the lower orders. The scrapbook ends with a newspaper article from the local paper, detailing the sale of the building to the Catholic Church in 1931. Mulder closes the scrapbook and replaces it on the shelf, then reaches for an identical one right next to it, opening it.

"Another scrapbook," he says. "From when the place was a home for wayward girls."

"It's all very interesting, I'll give you that, Mulder," Scully says, stepping back and continuing to scan the books on the shelves, "but I'm not sure what it has to do with our investigation. Shouldn't we be trying to get more information from the employees? Finding out if they've seen anything suspicious, if anyone's been acting strange?"

"You've heard all the employees we've talked to so far, Scully," Mulder points out. "They're all under strict instruction not to reveal anything to the guests."

"Damon seemed like he could be persuaded to talk," Scully muses, pulling a tall, unlabeled book from the shelf in front of her.

"True," Mulder concedes, "but he's only been on staff for a few weeks. Plus, he only works evenings, so it's not like we can head down there and pump him for information while we have lunch." He continues paging through the scrapbook. "And anyway... whatever it is I saw last night, I'm almost positive that _that's_ what's responsible for what's going on here. And if the hotel is haunted, what better way to figure out why than by learning about its history?"

"And what, exactly, do you suggest we do if it _is_ haunted, Mulder?" asks Scully. "The FBI is not qualified to perform exorcisms."

"Maybe the ghost wants something," says Mulder. "Maybe there's something she needs to know, something she needs to see, before she can be at peace." Scully rolls her eyes, opening the book in her hands. Mulder frowns down at it. "What have you got there?"

"It looks sort of like a guest book," Scully says, paging through it carefully. The paper is old and fragile, but she's right: it looks like some sort of a log. Along the left-hand side is a list of names- women's names, Mulder notices.

"I think these are the names of the girls who stayed here," he says, bending over Scully's shoulder for a closer look. "They've written down the date of arrival and the date of departure... and look, underneath that." He wraps an arm around her to point out a third date, underneath the other two. "After they arrived, but before they left. What do you think? Date they gave birth?" Scully leans back against him, seemingly unaware that she's doing it.

"Probably," she says. "Looks like some of them stayed for quite awhile after their babies were born, though." Mulder looks back at the scrapbook, where his attention is caught by a photograph of what looks to be a nursery. Scully follows his gaze, and nods, as though what she sees makes perfect sense to her. "They most likely had the mothers nurse their babies, at least for awhile," she observes. "See, you can see the nuns standing around the nursery-" she points at the photo, and Mulder follows her finger to the severe-looking older women in their black and white habits- "but the ones holding the babies, they're not nuns. They look like teenagers, most of them." She's right. The women standing over cribs, seated in rockers with infants in their arms and at their breasts, are very young, girls, really, all dressed in the same drab, shapeless dress.

"Did they take the babies home with them when they left?" Mulder asks, and Scully shakes her head.

"I don't think many of them did," she says, returning her attention to the guest log in her hands. "Look at the annotations here, next to the dates their babies were born. Each date has a letter next to it, and I'm willing to bet that 'A' stands for 'Adopted.'" Sure enough, when Mulder looks closely, there's a long line of A's scrawled next to the dates. He frowns.

"What does 'K' stand for?" he asks... and then a truly horrible thought occurs to him. "You don't think they-"

"No, no," Scully cuts him off. "I think that probably stands for 'Keep, or 'Kept.' I'd imagine at least a few of the girls couldn't be talked into giving up their children. Whether or not their families would accept them back was probably another matter... but I can understand it, making the decision to keep their child, even if it meant losing everything else they had." Her posture is suddenly stiff against him, and her voice is indescribably sad. He berates himself for exposing her to this. If he’d only taken the time to research the hotel’s history _before_ accepting the case….

“I’m sorry, Scully,” he murmurs against her ear. “Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, taking this case.” Scully shrugs him off, stepping away.

“I’m fine, Mulder,” she says, her voice tersely professional once again.

“It’s okay if you’re not,” he says. “You know that, right? If you need to talk about it, I’m here.” She doesn’t look at him. “In fact, I think we could _both_ benefit from talking-“

“ _Both_?” Scully’s voice and eyes are icy cold. “This is something that was done to _me_ , Mulder, and I am dealing with it just fine.” Her tone makes it perfectly clear that the subject is closed as she carries the guest book across the room, sitting down on the love seat without looking at him. Mulder bites back any number of angry retorts he could make, sensing that none of them would help at the moment.

He _does_ need to talk about it. He’s needed to talk about it since the moment he’d held that vial of her ova in his hands, the moment he’d considered its implications. The idea of Scully being infertile hadn’t been nearly as upsetting then, when most of his mind had been occupied with the simple matter of her survival, of discovering a cure for her cancer. But once the threat had passed, once she’d gone into remission, the worry had once again resurfaced.

“I’m sorry, they’re not viable,” the fertility specialist he’d gone to had told him, his face full of sympathy. “I have some information here on using a donor egg, if you’d like to take them home to your wife.” Mulder had shaken his head, his heart and his hopes plummeting sickeningly. “And, of course, I can dispose of the ova for you, if you’d like.”

“No!” Mulder had cried out, and the doctor had frowned, confused.

“Mr. Hale,” he’d said patiently, “The ova you’ve brought to me are not salvageable, not by any medical technology yet in existence, or even in development. Now, I understand the desire to use your wife’s eggs, but with the cost of continuing to store them being what they are-“  
“Cost is not a problem,” Mulder had stated firmly. “I don’t want them destroyed.”

The doctor had relented, and Mulder had returned home dejected. And then, barely two months later, Scully’s hopes had been re-ignited by the discovery of Emily… but Mulder, certain as he had been of the little girl’s origins, had cautiously tempered his excitement, and had tried his best to temper Scully’s as well. He had never wanted to be proven wrong so badly in his life, but when it had turned out that he had been right, when he’d seen how badly Emily had been suffering, he’d found himself unable to do anything but support Scully in her decision to allow her daughter’s pain to end.

It’s not, Mulder thinks as he cautiously takes a seat next to Scully, that he’s ever really had his heart set on becoming a father. In fact, if he’d been asked about it prior to meeting and falling in love with Scully, he would have said that having children was not and never would be a part of his life’s plan. And it isn’t as though there had been a lightning-strike moment where he’d suddenly become desperate to have children with her. It had been a slow dawning, not unlike the gradual awareness he had felt when he had realized that he was in love with her. And by the time it had become clear that Scully would never have the chance to be a mother, he had known enough to be certain that that meant that he would never be a father.

He’s grieving, as well. He just doesn’t know how to tell her that without making it seem as though he’s making light of the grief that _she’s_ experiencing.

“There are so many names in here,” Scully murmurs, jerking him back to the present. “They had girls coming and going all the time.” Mulder glances at the register that Scully is flipping through, then looks back at the binder is his own lap. He turns past an article in the New York Times praising the home for helping so many families in need, past photographs of babies in cribs, toddlers at play, nuns supervising the mothers’ time with their children. There are letters, as well, some from adoptive parents thanking the home for bringing them together with their children, some from the mothers’ parents, thanking them for their discretion. He stops to peruse one letter in particular that catches his attention, and Scully leans over his shoulder, reading it aloud.

“’Our daughter has communicated to us, in her last letter, her desire to keep her child and to raise it herself,’” Scully reads, “’but we, as her parents, feel strongly that this would be unwise, both for the child’s sake, and for hers. Her reputation would be destroyed, her chances of marrying gone, and the child would be forced to grow up with the stigma of being a bastard. Let him be adopted by someone who can give him an untarnished life.’” Scully frowns down at the letter. “This is awful,” she says. “Listen to this, Mulder: ‘We give you permission to do whatever is necessary to free both our daughter and her child of the burden of notoriety, even if it means being dishonest with her. Better she believe her child lost, so that she can grieve and get on with her life, than have her entire life destroyed for its sake. Though dishonesty may be a sin, we believe that in such a difficult case, the greater sin would be to blight the life of an innocent child because of his mother’s stubbornness.’ They wanted the home to lie to their daughter, to claim that her baby had died, and allow someone to adopt it.” Scully shakes her head. “I can’t imagine them putting their daughter through that kind of pain, that kind of grief, all for the sake of their reputation.”

“Well, having a baby out of wedlock was a much bigger deal back in the nineteen thirties than it is now,” Mulder says. “Especially if the mother came from a wealthy society family. Her parents probably thought that it was the kindest thing they could do for her.” Scully suddenly closes the guest register with a loud snap and jumps to her feet. She replaces the volume on the shelf.

“I think we should split up for awhile, Mulder,” she says. “I’m going to go see if I can’t convince any of the employees to talk.” Mulder stands as well.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he asks, and she shakes her head. He gets the message, loud and clear: she needs some time alone. That’s fine. He can give her that. “I’m gonna stay here a little longer,” he says. “Meet you later this afternoon?”

“Sure,” says Scully. Before she can object, Mulder closes the distance between them and kisses her cheek, once, softly. She manages something close to a smile. “See you later, Mulder.”

 

\-----------------------------------

Mulder doesn’t see Scully at lunch, and he decides to give her some space and not go looking for her. It’s close quarters, this case, and Scully has always been a very private person, so it doesn’t surprise him that after over thirty-six hours of being together nonstop, she might want a little space. He goes back to the library after he eats and picks up the scrapbook again, reading through more articles and letters, looking at more pictures.

More and more, he’s convinced that this haunting has its roots somewhere during this period in the building’s past. It’s unlikely that the spirit is someone who had died here during its stint as a hospital- Scully had explained to him that a place like this likely sent its worst cases elsewhere towards the end, preserving the illusion that most of those who checked in had been cured by the time they had left.

But during the Catholic Church’s ownership, these walls had clearly borne witness to more than their fair share of pain.

Some of the letters pasted into the scrapbook are from the mothers of the children born in the home, begging for details of who had adopted their babies, so that they might find them again and know that they were all right, that they were happy. The desperate tone of these missives tears at Mulder’s heart. One particular girl had written on three separate occasions, her grief and heartbreak mounting with each subsequent effort to find what she had lost. There are articles, as well, detailing the deaths of several of the girls. Some had died in childbirth… but some, their deaths listed as “sudden tragedies months after recuperation” had clearly been suicides.

As evening comes on and the room darkens around him, Mulder finally closes the scrapbook and replaces it on the bookshelf. His eyes are burning from too much reading in low light, and he decides to go up to their room before dinner and splash some cold water on his face. When he opens the door, the first things he sees is Scully, fast asleep on the bed, snoring softly.

For a moment, the sense of déjà vu is strong, and Mulder half-expects to see the ethereal form of the woman in black hovering over her, watching her sleep… but there’s nothing, no one. He glances at the mirror, but there’s no shadow there, either. Wherever the spirit has originated, it seems to prefer coming out only at night.

Mulder sits on the bed by Scully’s hip and gently strokes her shoulder. He bends close to her ear.

“Scully,” he says softly, “time to go have dinner.” She stirs and rolls onto her back, blinking sleepily up at him. She’s so damn adorable that for a moment, all Mulder wants to do is to lie down beside her and hold her close. But before he can do more than contemplate it, she’s sitting up, stretching and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“I had a headache, and I decided to lie down for a little while,” she says, sitting up. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Mulder says, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear. “It’s after seven o’clock, though, and I thought you might be ready for dinner.” Scully whirls to look at the clock on the bedside table.

“That late?” she exclaims. “Oh, Mulder, you should have come and gotten me sooner.”

“I didn’t even know you were up here,” he says, amused. “And anyway, you didn’t miss anything except me reading my way through the rest of that scrapbook.” She raises her eyebrows in surprise.

“You read that whole thing?” He nods. “Anything helpful?”

“Potentially,” he says. As they get ready and walk down to the dining room together, he tells her of his findings and explains his theory on the origins of the hotel’s haunting.

“That’s all very interesting, Mulder,” Scully says, as they cross the lobby, “but since we have absolutely no evidence that this supposed haunting has anything to do with the deaths that have taken place here, I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

“First off, Scully, I can promise you that this is more than a _supposed_ haunting,” says Mulder. “I know what I saw last night. And other people have seen it, too. And I’m telling you, Scully, whatever or whoever that spirit is, one thing is certain: it’s absolutely _filled_ with hatred.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” says Scully firmly, as they enter the dining room.

Damon is their server again tonight, but Mulder’s hopes of pumping the young man for more information are dashed almost immediately. Gregory Pekarcik is making the rounds, talking to one couple after another, and Damon is clearly unwilling to have his boss catch him airing any of the hotel’s dirty laundry. The food is just as good as it had been at the previous evening’s dinner, but the atmosphere at the table is strained. Mulder is annoyed with Scully for continuing to insist that he had been hallucinating the spirit he had seen over her, and she, in turn, is irritated with him for “wasting” an entire day reading up on what she considers to be completely irrelevant information.

As Mulder and Scully are finishing their dessert, Gregory Pekarcik approaches their table.

“Having a pleasant meal, Mr. and Mrs. Foster?” he asks, smiling genially. They both nod.

“It’s excellent, again,” says Scully.

“Did you enjoy your first day with us?”

“We did,” says Mulder. “We met some other couples over in the common room, and your desk clerk directed us to the library.” Mr. Pekarcik’s face lights up.

“Ah, the library!” he says. “It’s my pet project. I’ve been adding to it since I bought the place.”

“Was it you that compiled all those scrapbooks?” Mulder asks. “On the building’s history? They were fascinating reading.”

“Yes, that was me,” says Mr. Pekarcik, nodding proudly. “The workers found boxes and boxes of stuff in the basement and attic when I was renovating the place. They wanted to just throw it away, but I made them leave it so that I could go through it. I confess, I have a passion for history, no matter how obscure or inconsequential. Whether it’s the history of an empire or the history of a family, I love it all.”

“Pekarcik is an interesting name,” Scully comments. “Where’s it from? With an interest in history like that, I imagine you must have your whole family tree mapped out for hundreds of years.”

“My parents’ family tree, yes,” Mr. Pekarcik says with a sigh. “They were Romanian immigrants who came to America in 1929. I was adopted sometime after they had established themselves in this country. It was a closed adoption, so as to my own ancestors….” He shrugs. “I suppose that’s the root of my interest. I don’t know _my_ history, so I like to read about everyone else’s.”

“That’s understandable,” says Mulder. “In any case, I found the scrapbook on the Catholic girls’ home especially interesting.”

“Oh, yes,” says Mr. Pekarcik, his blue eyes shining. “You know, we still get people coming to look at the place, people who were born here and adopted out who are trying to trace their heritage. Unfortunately….” He sighs regretfully. “We don’t have much to tell them. The archdiocese took all of the adoption records with them when they sold the building to protect the privacy of the families who had paid a great deal of money to protect their reputations. The concept of ‘open adoption’ as we know it was still a good distance in the future… otherwise, I would know a lot more about my own heritage than I do!”

“ _You_ were born here?” asks Mulder, surprised.

“I was, indeed,” says Mr. Pekarcik. “One of hundreds of babies born in this building. My parents were very supportive of my desire to know where I had come from, but unfortunately, there was only so much they could tell me. They knew nothing about the young woman who gave birth to me, and the home would certainly not tell them anything. I tried to get more information myself, when I was older, but…” He shakes his head. “The Church was not very forthcoming. But when it came time to retire, and I heard that this place was going to be torn down if something didn’t buy it? It seemed like a sign. I couldn’t _not_ purchase it.” He gazes around at the dining room, smiling like a proud father. “No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve always felt such a strong pull to this place. I’m meant to be here.”

“You’ve done a wonderful job with it,” Scully says warmly. “We’re enjoying our stay very much.” Mr. Pekarcik beams.

“Very pleased to hear it,” he says. “If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to ask, no matter the hour. My own apartment is on the first floor, right at the very end of the left-hand hallway, so please, anything at all, don’t hesitate to come knocking!” He bids them farewell and moves on to the next table. Mulder turns back to Scully, eyebrows raised.

“The plot thickens,” he murmurs, and Scully frowns.

“I don’t see what his being born here has to do with anything, Mulder,” she says. “Are you ruling him out as a suspect?”

“Well, unless it’s for insurance money- which, according to the guy’s bio, he doesn’t need because he’s absolutely loaded- I can’t see why he’d sabotage his own hotel.” He leans back in his seat. “And anyway, I’m already relatively certain our culprit isn’t even human- at least, not any more.” Scully rolls her eyes. “Just wait until tonight, Scully. We’re staying awake until she shows up again.”

“ _You_ can stay awake if you want, Mulder, but _I_ fully intend to get a good night’s sleep. By all means, wake me if your ‘visitor’ makes a second appearance… but I’m warning you, if you wake me up to an empty room, I’m taking the car and you’re walking back to the airport.”

 

——————————-

 

It’s not the cold that wakes him this time. It’s the voice.

He’s dreaming- or, at least, he thinks he is- of his childhood home, of his sister. It’s the weekend, Saturday morning, and he’s trying hard to sleep in, but Samantha won’t stop calling him. She’s jumping on the bed, trying to wake him up, and he rolls over, stubbornly, ignoring her.

“Go ‘way, Sam,” he mumbles. “M’not ready to get up yet.”

“Come _on_ , Fox,” his sister whines. “There’s no one to play with. I’m bored.” He swats a hand in her general direction.

“Go play by yourself,” he says. 

“ _FOX._ ” Samantha’s voice is suddenly unnaturally deep, and Mulder goes cold all over. He wrenches his eyes open, taking in the sight of the shadowed hotel room ceiling, the antique furniture. Looking to the right, he sees Scully, fast asleep beside him.

A dream, then. Certainly not an unusual occurrence; dreams of Samantha have been plaguing him for years. But somehow, this one feels different.

“Fox!”

The voice, as improbable as it is, is coming from outside, from beyond the French doors, which, tonight, have remained tightly closed against the storm that has still been raging at bedtime. Now, however, Mulder cannot hear the sound of the wind, and outside the window, he can see only sunlight. Has he slept the whole night through?

“Fox, I’m waiting!”

Samantha’s voice. Again. Coming from outside. Dreamlike, Mulder sits up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing. He feels curiously light, as though the soft carpeting under his feet were buoying him up, as he walks slowly to the French doors and throws them open.

Outside, the sun is shining, and it’s not the grounds of Whitehall Manor that greet his eyes, but the sunny, grassy backyard of his childhood home. And standing in the middle of the yard, smiling up at him, her hair in pigtails….

“Samantha!” He cries out her name before he remembers Scully sleeping across the room, but when he turns to look, she hasn’t stirred. Looking back out the window, over the balcony with its empty flowerpots, he sees Sam, still standing there, waving up at him. The sun is warm on his face, and the breeze is sweet with the scent of fresh-cut grass, tangy with the salt of the nearby ocean. It’s the sort of summer day every kid lives for, and he suddenly feels that he’s wasting it, shut away up here in this dark room.

“Come down, Fox!” Samantha calls. “Hurry up! I need to show you something!” Mulder turns from the window without another thought, without stopping to wake Scully, and heads for the door. He glances at his shoes, lying against the wall… but no, the sun-warmed grass will feel good on his bare feet. He and Sam hardly ever wear shoes in the summer, anyway.

The hallway is dark and quiet, and he nearly stops, confused. How can it be so sunny outside, and so gloomy in here? But there’s no time, Sam is waiting for him, and so he shakes off the thought and runs quickly down the stairs, through the deserted lobby, and into the elegant ballroom at the back of the building. The wall of windows that give out on the grounds leading to the lake seem dark… but as he approaches, they brighten, and he sees, once again, the backyard, Sam standing in the middle, her hands on her hips, waiting.

With his hand on the glass door leading outside, he stops.

The sunlight from outside isn’t shining through the windows, somehow. Outside, it’s a bright and beautiful morning… but the ballroom is every bit as black and shadowed as one would expect it to be in the middle of the night. Frowning, Mulder turns to see if he can see the sun from the windows on the other side of the room.

“Fox, are you coming or not?” yells Samantha, and Mulder finds that he cannot resist his sister’s voice, not after so many years of not hearing it. He yanks the door open decisively and rushes out onto the grass. His sister beams up at him as he approaches. “I thought you were _never_ gonna wake up,” she tells him. She reaches out, grabbing his hand in hers, and tugs him towards the edge of the yard. “Come on, you’ll never believe what I found in the woods!” Mulder follows after her obediently.

“Sam, how did you get here?” he asks as they near the trees. She looks back at him over her shoulder, smiling bemusedly.

“You’re silly, Fox,” she says. “I’ve always been here.”

“But you were gone,” Mulder protests. “You were gone for so long….” Sam shakes her head impatiently and continues to drag him onward.

“Are you teasing me?” she asks. “Because Mom told you to quit teasing me so much. I’ll tell if you don’t stop.” Mulder opens his mouth to reply, and discovers that he’s shaking. Shivering, really; his teeth are chattering so hard that it hurts. There’s a strange pain in his feet, as though he’s walking on sharp rocks… but when he looks down, it’s only dead leaves under him, nothing that should cause pain like this. His face stings terribly, as though he’d been in the sun all day without any sunblock, even though he knows he’s only been outside for a few minutes, not nearly long enough to get sunburnt. His nose is running and his eyes are streaming. He tries to stop, but Samantha pulls him onward.

“S-s-s-am,” he stutters, fighting to get the words out through his chattering teeth. “S-s-s-ome… s-something is wrong.” His lungs are burning like he’s been running for hours. Every breath is agony. “I-I c-c-can’t… I c-c-can’t keep g-g-g-going. _Stop._ ”

“We’re almost there, Fox!” Samantha says, continuing to yank on his arm, and he follows, helpless, until at last, they reach a clearing in the woods. Mulder looks around, completely confused now.

A graveyard. They’re standing in a graveyard. One that he knows, for certain, is nowhere near the house where he and Samantha had lived as children. It’s not very large- no more than two dozen graves- and the headstones are small and modest. Mulder glances own at Samantha, who points earnestly at a stone directly in front of them.

“There,” she says, and Mulder staggers forward, the pain in his feet almost unbearable now, to see what it is that his sister wants to show him. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he remembers learning that a person who is dreaming will not be able to read anything he sees in his dream, and so he is fully prepared to see nothing but blurred gibberish on the headstone… so it’s with great surprise that he finds that he can read the name “Olivia Westphal” as clear as day.

Mulder turns back to look at Sam… and she’s gone. Vanished. Gone, too, is the warm, green grass, the smell of the sea… and the sun. Looking around, Mulder can scarcely see anything in the black night pressing in on all sides. He is still in a graveyard- that much was no dream- but now, it’s the middle of the night, the snowstorm is howling around him, and he’s up to his knees in snow. Barefoot. Wearing nothing but his pajama pants and a t-shirt.

Mulder has never been this cold in his entire life. His knees are weak, he’s dizzy- sleepy, almost- and he sinks slowly down against Olivia Westphal’s gravestone, unable to hold himself upright any longer. His eyes scan the trees around him desperately, wondering if there’s a windbreak that he could drag himself under, somewhere that the snow isn’t as deep, where he could huddle up away from the bite of the wind until he can summon the strength to get back to the hotel.

Under a tree at the edge of the clearing, there’s a shadow, a darker patch in the blackness of the night, as though someone is standing just out of sight under the branches. Mulder squints, trying to make out who it is through the whirling snow.

“Samantha?” he calls, his voice weak. The figure under the tree begins to move towards him, and he sees immediately that it’s much too tall to be Samantha. “No,” he moans, understanding dawning as he recognizes the black dress, the flowing hair bleeding like ink into the air around her. He remembers, with a terrible lurch in his stomach, the woman who had frozen to death within sight of the hiking trail, the man who had wandered out onto the lake in the middle of the night and had fallen through the ice. “ _No_.”

Heedless, she approaches. As she leaves the shelter of the trees, her face begins to take shape. Her torn black gash of a mouth turns upward in a cruel smile. Red eyes regard him pitilessly. 

The last thing Mulder hears, as he slips into unconsciousness, is her snarling growl of a laugh.


	4. Chapter 4

There are voices at the very edges of Mulder’s awareness, one very familiar, one less so, pricking at his consciousness, seeking to drag him out of the peaceful slumber into which he has fallen. It’s warm where he is, comfortable, though he knows, somehow, that the warmth is wrong, a dangerous illusion.

“ _MULDER!_ ” Even through his fog of confusion and lethargy, he recognizes Scully’s voice, hears the panic and terror that tug at his heart. He knows he should answer her, knows he should call out and draw her to him, but the only sound he can force through his lips is a weak, breathy whimper. His arms and legs refuse to obey his commands to move. He feels weighted down, unnaturally heavy, unable to think clearly.

_”You’re dying. Just let it happen.”_

The cold, cruel whisper comes from beside him, from somewhere just outside of his peripheral vision… but he doesn’t need to see to know who’s speaking to him.

“No,” he croaks, gasping at the pain the single word costs him. The voice chuckles heartlessly.

 _”She’d be better off without you. You know she would.”_ He doesn’t dispute this, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to let her go. Not this way, not by force. _”It’s too late, anyway. Feel how warm you are? How sleepy? That means the end is almost here.”_ He knows this already. He’s perfectly aware that the snow that’s blown into his lap should not feel like a comfortable quilt, that the wind on his face should feel like a sharp slap and not a gentle caress. 

“Why are you doing this?” he whispers hoarsely. “What do you want?”

 _”I want what was taken from me,”_ the voice hisses. _”But you can’t give me that. No one can. So I’ll settle for your life, instead.”_ The sinister laughter fills his ears again, and at the same time, he hears Scully’s voice, further off. She’s moving away from him.

Mulder thinks of her face in the hospital, when she had come out of Emily’s room for the last time. He remembers the dullness in her voice when she’d told him that it was over, the way she’d shied away from him when he’d tried to embrace her, how she’d simply asked him to please find her some information on local funeral homes while she went to call her mother.

He thinks of the pain in her face at the church, the anguish, the confusion of the empty coffin, the way she hadn’t been able to bring herself to put her cross back around her neck for well over a week.

He remembers her face when she’d come to his motel room at night, how she’d clung to him, how she hadn’t been able to meet his gaze as she’d mounted him, no matter how much he’d tried to get her to look him in the eye. He remembers how badly he had wanted to help her to feel better any way that he possibly could.

If she wants to leave him, to save herself, to spare herself the heartache he seems powerless to stop visiting on her, she can leave. But _he_ will not leave _her._ Not like this. Not in a way that is guaranteed to bring her even more pain.

Mulder summons every ounce of strength he has left and pulls his legs up, out of the frozen crust of snow that’s settled over him. He draws them into his body and pushes up, leaning back against the gravestone behind him… but he gets no further before his legs give out and he falls.

“Mulder, where are you?” Scully’s voice is closer again, and Mulder knows that his only hope is to get her to hear him. He’ll never be able to walk back to the hotel on his own. He hitches in his breath, feeling the cold air burning in his lungs.

“Scully,” he rasps. No good. She’ll never be able to hear that, even though the wind has died down. “Sc-Sc-Scully!” Better… but still not loud enough. He takes his deepest breath yet and gives it one more try. _”SCULLY!”_

“Mulder?” She calls to him, closer this time. He can hear branches snapping in the woods, coming nearer and nearer.

“H-h-here,” he calls, frightened at how exhausted the effort of speaking has made him. “I’m here, Scully!” He senses more than sees her crashing into the clearing- turning his head would take more energy than he’s got left- and he hears her anguished cry as she catches sight of him.

“ _Mulder_! Oh, my God!” At the edge of his hazy vision she appears, dropping down in front of him, a look of absolute panic on her face. He can see that she’s touching him, running her hands over his arms, his face, but he can’t feel anything. His skin is almost completely numb. “Come on, Mulder,” she says, sliding an arm under his shoulder and trying to lift him. He does his best to get his legs underneath himself, to push off the frozen ground, but his limbs are heavy, logy, refusing to obey his commands, and he’s much too tall for Scully to lift on her own. She seems to come to the same conclusion and stands up.

“Hang on, Mulder,” she says, unzipping her heavy winter coat and pulling it off. She drapes it over him, tucking it in as best she can, shoving at his legs until his knees bend and his limbs are tucked in close. She pulls her knit hat off and yanks it firmly down around his ears. “I can’t carry you back on my own. I’m going to get help, okay?”

“No,” Mulder moans. “Sh-sh-she’ll come back.” Scully frowns, confused.

“You’re hallucinating, Mulder,” she says. “We need to get you inside as quickly as possible. I’ll be back soon, but I need you to try and stay awake, okay?” He tries to protest, but she’s gone before he can force his frozen lips to form the words, dashing away into the woods, back towards the hotel.

 _Stay awake_ , he tells himself firmly, repeating her words over and over. _Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake._ But it’s much easier said than done. He feels more exhausted than he’s ever felt in his life, and with the warm, down-filled parka draped over him, with Scully’s soothing scent surrounding him, his eyes begin to close again almost immediately.

In no time at all, Mulder feels himself being lifted clear of the gravestone. Scully is at his right- he can just make out the bright red of her hair in the moonlight, now that the storm is over and the clouds have cleared- but he can’t seem to turn his head to see who’s at his left.

“We need to get him inside as quickly as possible,” Scully says.

“There’s a service elevator that housekeeping uses,” answers a deep voice to his left. With his brain so foggy and confused, it takes Mulder a moment to place the voice as Gregory Pekarcik’s. “We can use that to get him up to your room, and then we can call for a doctor… though with all the snow, and us being so far out, it could take awhile for help to arrive.”

“ _I’m_ a medical doctor,” Scully says. “I’ll take care of him. If we can’t warm him up, we’ll call for a life flight helicopter. But he’s conscious, he’s got some limb control. I don’t think it will be necessary.”

Mulder’s impressions of the next few minutes are confused and disjointed. Scully and Mr. Pekarcik manage to get him back through the woods, across the grounds, and into the hotel, Mulder helping as much as he can with what little muscle control he has. He finds, as he moves, that his legs regain some strength as he works the muscles, and within minutes of being in the warm hotel, some of the feeling begins to return to his cheeks. With it comes a sharp, burning pain.

Mr. Pekarcik offers his own apartment, since it’s closer, but Scully wants Mulder in their bed so that she can keep watch over him as long as necessary. The elevator in the back of the building takes them up to the third floor, and soon enough, he’s being carefully lowered to sit at the edge of the bed. Scully immediately begins yanking at his sodden pajamas, undoing the snow-crusted buttons on his shirt and gently guiding the sleeves down his arms, being careful in case his skin has frozen to the fabric.

“I’ll go and get some more blankets,” says Mr. Pekarcik. “And I think there are space heaters downstairs in the utility closet- I could bring one of those-“

“No,” says Scully, cutting him off. “He needs to be warmed up gradually. Excessive heat could cause his contracted blood vessels to dilate too quickly. It could cause a heart attack.” She glances up at the owner. “But extra blankets would help.” Mr. Pekarcik nods and disappears out the door, leaving Scully to continue undressing Mulder. She has him lie back on the bed so that she can remove his pajama pants and boxers, then helps him wriggle his way up to the pillows. She tucks the quilt tightly around him, then disappears into the bathroom, returning with several thick, fluffy bath towels, which she layers on top of the blankets.

“Ev-ev-everyth-th-thing h-h-h-hurts,” he moans, shifting uncomfortably in bed. He feels as though his entire body is being pricked with hot needles, and he’s begun to shiver again, shaking so violently that his teeth clack together.

“It’s your circulation returning to normal,” says Scully, sitting at the edge of the bed and laying a hand alongside his cheek. “It could be painful for awhile. But you’re shivering again, and that’s a good sign.” The door opens, and Mr. Pekarcik re-enters, arms full of quilts and fluffy down duvets. Scully takes them from him and begins to spread them out over Mulder.

“Is there anything else I can get you?” Scully turns to look at Mr. Pekarcik, shaking her head.

“No, I think we’ll be all right,” she says. “I may come in search of some tea in a bit, when he’s up to drinking it. May I use the kitchen?”

“Of course,” says Mr. Pekarcik. “It’s locked up right now, but I’ll speak to the desk clerk and he’ll let you in and show you where everything is.” He steps back towards the door. “I’m so sorry about this, Mrs. Foster. I truly am.” Scully looks up at him, frowning.

“Mr. Pekarcik, whatever happened here tonight, I sincerely doubt that any of it was your fault,” she says. “I have no idea how my husband ended up out there, but I can’t think of any way you would be to blame.”

“Things like this keep happening,” Mr. Pekarcik protests, shaking his head sadly. “Mr. Foster isn’t the first person to wander outside in the snow for no apparent reason in the middle of the night.” He rubs his temples. “With as many times as something like this has happened, I’m beginning to think that maybe I _should_ have stuck to my original plan of owning a small bed and breakfast.” He gives himself a quick shake, smoothing his features back into his helpful smile. “But please, ignore my ramblings. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything at all, Mrs. Foster.” And with a quick bow, he leaves, shutting the door behind him. Scully turns back to Mulder.

“What the _hell_ were you doing out there, Mulder?” she demands, and Mulder winces at her tone. “Outside in the middle of a snowstorm, in your pajamas, _barefoot_?”

“It was her again, Scully,” Mulder says, and Scully’s eyes instantly narrow.

“If you tell me you went out there ghost-hunting and didn’t even have the sense to put on shoes first-“

“No, it wasn’t her at first,” Mulder says. “I woke up because someone was calling my name outside.” He huddles down under the blankets, away from Scully’s skeptical stare. “It was like a dream, almost, but… it wasn’t.”

“Who was calling you, Mulder?” Scully asks.

“It was Samantha,” he whispers. “Outside, in the grass, calling me to come down.” Scully’s face softens.

“Mulder….”

“I looked out the balcony doors, and it wasn’t the hotel grounds I saw. It was the backyard of my house, the house I grew up in, and it was daytime, the sun was out, and Samantha was telling me to hurry up because she had something to show me. And it… it was just so _real_ , Scully, that I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I ran downstairs and out the door.”

“So you dreamt you saw Samantha,” Scully says.

“ _Not_ a dream,” Mulder says firmly. “Not really.”

“It couldn’t have been anything else, Mulder,” says Scully.

“I’m telling you, it was _her_ ,” Mulder insists. “She got in my head, Scully. She used a vision of my sister to lure me out there, to get me away from the hotel, into the woods, into that cemetery… and then Samantha vanished, and suddenly it wasn’t the woods near my house anymore… and _she_ was there.”

“It still could have been a hallucination,” Scully says stubbornly.

“Think about it, Scully,” Mulder says. “One person has already wandered away from the trail and frozen to death. Another went out onto the lake in the middle of the night- in his pajamas, barefoot, just like me- and fell through. How did they get there? What would cause a person to walk more than two hundred yards through the snow?” Scully bites her lip, thinking. 

“And you really didn’t feel the cold?” she asks. Mulder shakes his head.

“Not until the vision was over,” he says. “And then it was _all_ I could feel.” He looks at her imploringly. “You have to believe me, Scully. This ghost, this spirit, whatever she is, she’s luring people to their deaths. And I’m almost certain she talked the suicide victims into killing themselves.” At the memory of that cold voice, telling him that he was going to die, he shivers even more violently. Scully immediately looks concerned.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, her voice tender now.

“Like I just can’t get warm,” Mulder says. “Can’t stop shivering.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath and closes his eyes. “Dizzy, too. Drowsy.” Scully stands suddenly, kicking her shoes off, and begins to peel off her clothing. Mulder peeks his head out from under the covers, interested in spite of himself. “Scully? What are you doing?” By the time he’s done asking the question, she’s naked, and there’s a sudden influx of cold air as she lifts the covers, climbing into bed next to him. She scoots close, molding her body to his, and slides her arms around him, cradling his head to her breast.

“Body heat, Mulder,” she says, by way of explanation. “You remember, don’t you?” He chuckles into her soft skin, pressing closer for warmth. Even through the stabbing pains are still racing up and down his limbs, she feels heavenly.

“And it didn’t even have to rain sleeping bags,” he says. She laughs and threads her fingers into his hair, stroking him gently. “Hey, Scully,” he says, glancing up, “does this mean I’m about to get lucky?”

“Mulder,” she says, rolling her eyes, “you were found, at two o’clock in the morning, inches from freezing, in a graveyard in the middle of the woods, all because I just happened to wake up needing to use the bathroom and noticed that you were gone. I’d say you’ve already used up your allotment of luck for today, wouldn’t you? Besides,” she continues, sliding one smooth leg up and over his hip, “I would be _shocked_ if you were in any condition to do anything like that right now.” She’s right, though he’s loath to admit it; just the fact that he’s not responding to her naked body at all right now, when he frequently can’t stop certain parts of him from responding to her while she’s fully clothed, is enough for him to know that. “Just sleep, Mulder,” Scully says, pulling his head against her breasts again. “I’ll be right here.”

And somehow, in spite of his shivering, in spite of the needle pricks of pain all over his skin, eventually, he drops off.

This time, he does not dream.

 

————————————

 

Mulder wakes up flat on his back, sweating so heavily that the sheets under him are damp. Scully’s warm weight is sprawled atop him like a human blanket, and lying over both of them are at least five heavy quilts. He’s _incredibly_ uncomfortable, his mouth is dry, and his head is pounding, but he discovers that the last thing he wants to do is to move and risk waking her up.

That night in the motel, when she had come to him, when she had climbed onto his lap as he’d sat against the headboard, he’d known, somehow, that she wasn’t going to be there in the morning. He’d hoped, of course, to be wrong… but waking up alone in a bed that still smelled of her- of them- had not been a shock at all.

Now, in spite of the fact that their skin is stuck together with sweat, in spite of both of his legs being asleep where her weight is resting on him, in spite of the strands of red hair that are plastered to his cheeks and tickling his nose with each breath, Mulder discovers that waking up with Scully in his arms is every bit the slice of heaven that he’s always imagined it would be. He badly wants to savor it (and to let her sleep- this is the second night in a row she’s had to get up at some ungodly hour to take care of him, and the sun’s not even fully risen yet), but he really needs to use the bathroom, and her weight on his stomach isn’t helping matters any. He tries to ease himself out from under her slowly and carefully, sliding one limb off of his body at a time, until finally, she’s lying flat on her stomach on the mattress. She sighs softly and rolls over, but doesn’t wake.

Mulder stumbles to the bathroom on weak and aching legs, feeling for all the world like he’d spent the entire night binge drinking and is now suffering from the mother of all hangovers. He uses the toilet, washes his hands, and, for good measure, splashes some water on his face, which helps him feel slightly more human. He returns to the bed to find that Scully has not stirred, and before getting back in, he removes all but the bottom quilt, folding the others and piling them on the dresser.

Mulder slides under the covers and spoons up against Scully, who stretches, catlike, and rolls onto her back, opening her eyes and looking up at him sleepily. He braces himself, expecting her to jump out of bed immediately, the way she had the previous morning… but she surprises him by giving him a drowsy smile, rolling on her side to face him, and cuddling close.

“You look much better,” she says, stroking his cheek. “Your color’s back to normal. How do you feel?”

“Like I spent last night at a raging kegger,” Mulder says, closing his eyes under her gentle touch. He runs his fingers lightly up and down the velvet skin of Scully’s waist, suddenly fully aware that she’s still completely naked under the quilt, that the tips of her perfect breasts are brushing against his chest, that she’s draping one smooth leg over his hips to pull herself even closer.

Scully looks up at him, her eyebrow raised, lips quirked in an amused smile. “You can’t be feeling _that_ terrible, clearly,” she says, pressing up against him.

“I think we’ve established, after last night, that I literally have to be on death’s door before you stop having this effect on me, Scully,” he murmurs, reciprocating the pressure of her hips with a gentle thrust of his own. Scully closes her eyes and gasps.

“We shouldn’t,” she whispers, her own fingers betraying her words as she runs them over his chest and shoulders, buries them in his hair. 

“Give me one good reason why not,” Mulder says, bending and placing a line of nibbling kisses along her jaw.

“You… you almost _died_ last night, Mulder,” she gasps. “You need to rest… to recover… to… _ohhhh_ ….” She moans as he slides a hand down between them, brushing his fingers lightly against her clitoris, sliding one finger slowly inside of her.

“I’m not saying you won’t have to do all the work, Scully,” he says. “I’m just saying… we _can._ ” He withdraws the finger and Scully whimpers, chasing it with her hips. “Unless you don’t want to.” She looks up at him, her blue eyes flaming, and without another moment’s hesitation, she rolls him onto his back. He’s momentarily dizzy and he closes his eyes, hoping she won’t notice, worried she’ll put a stop to this immediately if he gives any sign at all that he might not be up to it.

But if she does notice his momentary discomfort, she says nothing. She straddles his thighs, sliding her body along his to warm him in the sudden absence of the quilt, pulling herself higher when she gets to his shoulders, until she can reach his face. She kisses him deeply, grinding her hips against him. He groans into her mouth and seizes her hips roughly in his hands, lifting them, pulling her into position; then, his lips still on hers, his tongue still in her mouth, he takes himself in one hand and uses the other to pull her down, bringing her hips flush against his in one smooth upstroke.

Scully sits up abruptly with a gasp as he fills her, closing her eyes and dropping her head back. She stays still for a moment, adjusting, and he gives her a moment to acclimate. After a few seconds, she opens her eyes and looks down at him. Her gaze is burning, her lips are parted, her nipples stand in tight little peaks, and Mulder knows that, if he weren’t still weak from his ordeal the night before, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from flipping her onto her back and pounding into her for all he’s worth.

As it is, he badly needs her to move, and he closes his hands back around her hips again, gently urging her to lift. She arches her eyebrow at him.

“Impatient, Mulder?” she asks, a wickedly teasing smile playing at the corners of her lips. In answer, he uses what little energy he has to lift her up, just once, and bring her back down- hard. She yelps in surprise; then, lightly, she smacks his hand. “Don’t _do_ that,” she admonishes. “You’re in no condition to be lifting me up.”

“Then for the love of god, Scully, _move!_ ” She laughs at his desperation, but all the same, she begins a languid, rocking rhythm, bringing him relief at last. He keeps his hands on her hips until she takes one, bringing his fingers just above where they’re joined, coaxing them into the same circular pattern she had shown him their first time, asking him for a favor he's only too willing to grant. When he’s got it right, she lets go and leaves him to it, closing her eyes and tilting her head back again.

With Scully doing all of the heavy lifting, Mulder is free to watch her, to take in every detail of her appearance in a way he hadn’t had the chance to before. He admires the curve of her narrow waist, the muscles of her lean thighs, her elegant neck, the way her collarbone perfectly frames her shoulders, white with a smattering of cinnamon freckles spread haphazardly over them. She’s poetically beautiful, her movements atop him lithe and graceful, her legs more than strong enough to move her with no assistance from her arms… which is good for her, because it leaves her hands free to fondle her breasts.

Good for Mulder, too.

He begins to rub her harder as she pinches her nipples, much more sharply than he would ever dare to. She circles her hips atop him, hitting new places, finding new angles, and they both groan in unison as she discovers one that’s perfect for both of them. Abandoning her breasts (Mulder bites back a disappointed whimper), she leans back, putting her hands on his thighs to hold herself up, rocking faster. Mulder, in turn, speeds up his hand to match, and before long, she’s bucking against him without any set rhythm, lost to the feel of him inside of her and of his fingers against her.

Sensing that she’s nearly there, Mulder stops trying to hold back his own climax- which has been threatening to overtake him since the moment Scully’s hands touched her breasts- and allows it to build. As exhausted as he still is, he can’t seem to stop his hips from thrusting, trying to meet her erratic movements, and in seconds, it does the trick, and she’s crying out, tightening around him, triggering his own release. He grasps her hips and moans something incoherent that might be her name- his powers of speech have taken a leave of absence- and empties himself into her as she falls across his chest, panting.

Mulder struggles for words, trying to find something to say, anything, that will forestall Scully getting up as soon as she’s got her breath back, something that will keep her in bed with him instead of running off to hide the way she had after their first time… but before he can work out just what those magic words might be, his exhausted eyes are drooping, and moments later, he’s fast asleep.

 

———————————

 

When Mulder opens his eyes for the second time, the room is flooded with sunlight, and the clock on the nightstand tells him that he’s missed breakfast- has, in fact, slept until lunchtime. He knows without looking, by the coolness of the sheets next to him, that Scully is gone, and it’s with a heavy, unhappy sigh that he rolls to face the empty space she’s left behind.

“Hey,” comes a soft voice, and Mulder sits up quickly, startled. Scully is sitting in an armchair next to the bed, her feet propped up on the mattress, one of the scrapbooks from the library open on her lap. “I was going to try to wake you soon if you didn’t get up on your own. How are you feeling?” _Much better, seeing you_ , he thinks, but he keeps it to himself, knowing the eye-rolling such a comment would likely trigger.

“Not bad,” he says, and it’s the truth. The pounding in his head has receded somewhat, and he’s no longer dizzy. “I still feel weak, like I’m recovering from the flu… but I don’t feel hungover anymore, so that’s an improvement.” Scully smiles, satisfied.

“You’ll probably feel even better once we get some food into you,” she tells him. “I put in an order for lunch to be brought up to the room. It should be here any minute now.” At the thought of food, Mulder’s stomach gives an audible grumble, and Scully chuckles. “Not a moment too soon, it would seem.” Mulder pulls himself to a sitting position, leaning back against the headboard and tucking a pillow behind himself. Once he’s situated, he pats the mattress next to him, and Scully puts the scrapbook down, smiling indulgently. She crawls across the bed to him and he tucks her under his arm as she rests her head against his chest. “Sorry I couldn’t stay in bed any longer,” she says. “I just wasn’t sure how much longer you’d be asleep, and I thought I should use the time wisely.”

“I’m just glad you were still here,” Mulder tells her truthfully. “I wasn’t sure you would be, after last time.” She stiffens in his arms, and he immediately regrets his words… but after a moment, she sighs and relaxes again.

“I owe you an apology for that, Mulder,” she says. “After you fell asleep that night, I sort of panicked.”

“Why?” he asks. She glances up at him, her face red, her eyes nervous. “Scully,” he murmurs, stroking her cheek with his thumb, “you can tell me.”

“I was worried….” She pushes herself to a sitting position, breaking their contact, and looks down, biting her lip. “I was afraid that maybe… you had only done that with me because you felt sorry for me. Because of what happened in San Diego.” There’s a beat of silence, and then Mulder can’t help himself: he laughs. Scully frowns at him. “It’s not funny, Mulder,” she says.

“It kind of is, Scully,” he says, trying to be serious again, not wanting to offend her. “Because _I_ was afraid that maybe _you’d_ only done it because you needed comforting.” She stares at him, and moments later, she’s joined him in his laughter. 

“Maybe,” she says, shaking her head and chuckling, “we should have talked about all of this first.”

“Now why on earth would we want to do _that_ , Scully?” asks Mulder, reaching out and taking her hand. “Us, talk candidly about what’s bothering us? What kind of insanity is _that_?” Scully stops laughing abruptly. _Shit_ , Mulder thinks.

“You really feel that way?” Scully asks. “That we don’t talk? Don’t communicate about things that upset us?”

“I think that sometimes, we don’t,” Mulder says carefully. “I think, for example, it would do both of us a lot of good to talk about what happened in December.” Scully’s face is closed off so quickly, Mulder may as well have flipped a switch with his words.

“That’s different,” she says, pulling her hand away. “That’s something _I_ have to get through, Mulder. You can’t help me with that. It’s something I need to learn to live with.” It’s not the first time she’s said it, but the words don’t hurt any less.

“I just mean, Scully, that if you could see that I-“

“Mulder, _no._ ” Scully stands, crossing her arms firmly over her chest. “I think that right now, we should focus on the case. That’s what we’re here for.”

“Scully-“

“Where do you want to start today?” she asks, her tone making it clear that the subject is closed, and Mulder heaves a sigh. He can’t force her to talk about this, but sooner or later, he’s going to need to find a way to make her understand how he feels.

“I’d like to go back out to that cemetery,” he says, giving in. Scully frowns in confusion.

“Why?” she asks.

“That gravestone you found me sitting against… I felt such a pull towards it, like the spirit, or the ghost, or whatever she is, wanted me to be there.”

“I saw Mr. Pekarcik when I went down to order your lunch,” says Scully. “I asked him about that cemetery, and he says it’s where they buried some of the girls who died giving birth here. Apparently, some of their families didn’t bring their bodies home because the churches that their families belonged to felt that it would be wrong to bury them in a Catholic graveyard.” Mulder shakes his head in amazement.

“So much for the idea of forgiveness,” he says. “I want to go back out there and see what name is on that headstone.” Scully smiles, looking suddenly smug.

“We won’t need to,” she says. “I saw the name last night when we pulled you out of there. The woman buried in that grave was named Olivia Westphal.” She turns and picks up the scrabook, flipping it open to a page she has marked. Mulder sees a familiar newspaper clipping. “I looked through here to see whether that name showed up, and I found this article about a young woman who had died here. She’s named only as Olivia W, presumably because her parents didn’t want their last name associated with this place.” 

“I read that article yesterday,” says Mulder. “It didn’t say how she died, only that it had been a ‘sudden tragedy.’”

“Something tells me that that’s code for ‘suicide,’” says Scully darkly.

“I think you’re right,” says Mulder, holding his hands out. “Let me see that.” Scully puts the scrapbook into his hands, and he flips through it. “I remember that last name from something else in here, Scully,” he tells her. “You read it to me yourself, yesterday, and I read it again after you left the library.” He finds the letter he’s looking for and holds the book up for her to see. Scully gasps.

“The father who wanted the home to lie to his daughter, to tell her that her baby had died,” she says. “And then to let the child be adopted.”

“Signed,” says Mulder, pointing to the bottom of the page, “by one Michael Ian Wesphal, of New York City.” Scully turns suddenly, crossing the room to the dresser. When she comes back, she’s holding the Catholic home’s record book, the one that details every girl who had passed through their doors. She opens it to a bookmarked page.

“I looked her up, while I was waiting for you to wake up,” she says, pointing to an entry near the top of the page. “Look: Olivia Westphal, admitted on September sixth, 1939. She gave birth on March first of the following year… and look.” She points a shaking finger to a large letter “A” next to the baby’s birth date. “They gave her baby away and told her that it was dead,” says Scully, “and she killed herself out of grief.”

“And her parents left her here,” says Mulder angrily. “Rather than bring her body home and allow their shame to be known.” He looks up at Scully, whose eyes are wide. “Well,” he says, “I can’t think of a better reason to haunt this place, can you?” She shakes her head.

“I’ll admit that it all fits, Mulder,” she concedes, “but I’m not ready to accept the idea that a _ghost_ is responsible for this. Not without proof.”

“Well, Scully,” Mulder says, “you’d better go back downstairs and order a whole lot more coffee. We’ve got a long night ahead of us tonight.”


	5. Chapter 5

As much as he wants to stay awake with Scully and make a plan for tonight, Mulder is still not recovered from his ordeal in the blizzard, and as a consequence, he sleeps for much of the day.  Scully is there every time he wakes, reading in the chair by his bed, studying case notes, nibbling on a plate of fruit from downstairs, napping by his side.  At seven o'clock, she pulls him out of bed and makes him get dressed.

"We need to get you moving before you grow roots in that bed," she tells him, quelling his grumbling protests.  "Let's go and have dinner downstairs tonight."

"We can just as easily order it up to our room," Mulder argues, but Scully remains firm.

"There's no telling what will happen tonight," she says.  "For all we know, you and I could end up running through the snow in the middle of the night again.  That's going to be much harder to do if you're stiff and sore because you haven't used your legs all day."  He's about to continue fighting her, but the cramps that shoot up his thighs the moment he stands silence him, while she stands there, looking smug.  "Get dressed," she says, handing him a pair of clean boxers from his suitcase.  His legs continue to protest as he raises them, one at a time, to pull his shorts on.  Looking up, he sees her grinning mischievously at him as she offers him a fresh pair of jeans.

"What?" he demands, taking the clothing from her.

"Do you need help?" she asks.  Glaring, he shoves his legs into his jeans with unnecessary force and winces, which only makes her smile wider.

"No, I do not need _help_ getting dressed," he growls, crossing the room (suppressing another grimace as his stiff joints protest- he doesn't want to give her the satisfaction) and pulling a long-sleeved sweater from his suitcase.

"You seem a little stiff, is all," Scully says.

"You didn't mind me being stiff this morning," he shoots back, leering at her, and she rolls her eyes, chuckling.

"Come on, Mr. Foster," she says, taking his arm and leading him from the room.  "Let's go get some food in you."

Downstairs, dinner is in full swing, and it takes a moment for the hostess to locate an open table for them.  Their server is a young woman they haven't had before, and she's much too busy to talk to them, beyond taking their orders.  At Scully's urging, Mulder bypasses the richer options on the menu, in case he's not recovered enough to handle them.

As they're finishing their main course, Mr. Pekarcik rushes up to their table, his wide blue eyes full of concern behind his wire-rimmed spectacles.

"Mr. Foster!" he exclaims.

"Please, call me Eric," says Mulder.

"Eric, then," says Mr. Pekarcik, coming to a stop beside them.  "I'm so glad to see you up and about.  How are you feeling?"

"A little tired, but otherwise, no more the worse for wear," says Mulder.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am," says Mr. Pekarcik, and he looks it.  "I've arranged for two of my employees to patrol the first floor tonight.  Another snowstorm will be blowing through at around midnight, and I would hate to have a repeat of what happened to you... and I'd certainly like to avoid any more accidents like the ones we've had in the past."  From his breast pocket, he withdraws a business card and gives it to them.  "I'm making sure that all of the guests have my private phone extension.  If you have any problems, if you see anything strange or suspicious, please, don't hesitate to call me."

"Thank you so much, Mr. Pekarcik," says Scully sincerely.  The hotel owner gives them a cordial bow and moves on to the next table.  Scully turns back to Mulder.  "I feel terrible for him," she says softly.  "He's really doing the best he can with this place... and aside from all of these unexplained deaths, it's a lovely resort."

"Well... with any luck, we'll be able to help him out," says Mulder.  Scully looks skeptical.

"Even if it _is_ a ghost that's responsible for all of this, how are we going to be able to help?  How are you planning on making her leave?  Asking nicely?"

"She wants something, Scully," Mulder says confidently.  "If we can get her to stop trying to kill me long enough to get her to talk to us, maybe we can figure out how to help her find peace."  Scully sits back, arms crossed over her chest.

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"Easy," says Mulder, grinning.  "I'm going to try to get her to talk to you."

Upstairs, after dinner, they sit on the bed and play cards to try and stay awake, but when Mulder notices Scully trying to conceal a yawn for the fifth time, he puts his cards down.

"Why don't you go ahead and take a nap, Scully?" he asks.  "You must be exhausted, you were up half the night with me."

"Will you be able to stay awake?" she asks.

"No problem," says Mulder, waving his hand dismissively.  "I slept most of the day.  I've got hours left in me."  Scully doesn't look entirely convinced.  Mulder reaches out and takes the cards out of Scully's hand, shuffling them back into the stack and putting them in the box.  Standing, he turns the bed down, and with a hand on Scully’s back, coaxes her to lie down amid her half-hearted protests. He tucks the covers securely around her, bending to kiss her. She squints up at him.

“You’ll wake me?” she asks. “If you start feeling sleepy?”

“The moment my eyelids get heavy,” he promises. She nods, closes her eyes, and dozes off within minutes.

And within an hour, so does he.

 

——————————

 

Unlike that first night, when the cold had been responsible for waking him up, this time, it’s the noise… though, since the noise comes from the balcony doors blowing violently open, the cold isn’t far behind.

At the loud _THWACK_ of the left-hand door striking the wall, Mulder starts awake, the scrapbook that had been open on his lap sliding to the floor. Next to him, Scully sits bolt upright in bed, seeking out her gun on instinct, her eyes scanning the room for any possible threat. When her gaze catches on the open doors and the falling snow blowing through them, she looks up at Mulder, eyebrows raised.

“Were you getting too warm, Mulder?” she asks.

“ _I_ didn’t do that,” he says, climbing out of bed and crossing to the balcony to close the doors, firmly securing the latch. Outside, the blizzard has swept in again, as promised, and the grounds are lost in a blinding haze of white. He turns back to Scully, who’s frowning at him. “This is exactly what happened the first night we were here,” he tells her. “I woke up and found the doors open, and right after that, I heard the thumping in the hallway… and then….” He turns to the full-length mirror just in time to see the same dark shadow flitting across it… but before he can call out to Scully, he hears a sharp gasp from behind him and turns.

Scully is backed against the wall next to the bed, her blue eyes wide and terrified. Her gun, clutched in her shaking hands, is pointed directly in front of her (he almost wants to laugh- does she really think _shooting_ a ghost is going to work?), at the dark and shifting figure hovering before her.

Though Mulder can only see her from the back, he knows, somehow, that the face Scully is seeing is not the nightmare visage that had backed him into the mirror that first night and charged him in the graveyard on the second night. He’s almost certain that the face she is seeing is the one he had only seen in profile, the face that had worn a sad, gentle expression as the spirit had huddled over Scully, watching her sleep.

The woman’s head is cocked to one side, as though she’s considering the shaking, frightened woman in front of her, and Mulder thinks that this is probably the best chance they’ll have. He senses no rage, no malevolence coming from the spirit. And perhaps, now that they know her name, she’ll be more willing to communicate _without_ trying to force Mulder to harm himself. He decides to give it a try.

“Olivia?” he says softly, calmly. “Olivia Westphal?” The ghost turns to face him… and Mulder knows, immediately, that he’s made a terrible miscalculation.

Olivia Westphal’s face transforms instantly, fine features melting into a flat, black mask with a gaping hole for a mouth. She advances on him with a gibbering shriek, red eyes flaming, and Mulder feels himself pushed backwards as though by a hurricane-force wind until his back meets the wall.

“Mulder!” Scully calls out to him in alarm, and she says something else, asks him something, tells him something, but he can’t make out what it is, because suddenly, Olivia is speaking over her, and her snarling voice is all Mulder can hear.

 _”You’ve caused her enough pain, don’t you think?”_ Scully doesn’t react to this at all, and Mulder quickly realizes: the ghost isn’t speaking out loud. This is all in his head.

“Olivia,” Mulder tries again, “can’t you tell us how to help you? Tell us what you want, please.” She moves even closer, and Mulder finds that he can _smell_ her now, smell her rank stench of death and decay.

 _”You can’t give me what I want,”_ she tells him. _”But I can give_ her _what she needs.”_

“And what’s that, Olivia?” Mulder clings to a faint hope that using her name as many times as possible will encourage something, some connection, that will make her back off.

But it’s in vain.

 _”The same thing I’ve been trying to give her since the day you both arrived,”_ Olivia sneers. _”The same thing they all need. You, gone.”_

“I’m not-“ But Mulder’s protests die in his throat, as if by force. He feels his mouth moving, but it’s out of his control, and the words he speaks, though they’re in his voice, are not his own.

“Scully,” he hears himself saying, “give me your gun.” Scully stares at him, wide-eyed.

“What?” she says. “Why?”

“You won’t need it,” Olivia says, through him. “She doesn’t want to hurt you.”

“She wants to hurt _you_ ,” Scully protests.

“Please, Scully. It’s the only way.” And suddenly, Olivia’s plan becomes clear to him. He tries to tell Scully with his eyes that it’s not him saying these words, but he feels as though the muscles of his face are frozen. “Give it to me, Scully. We can put a stop to this once and for all.” Still watching him warily, Scully lowers her weapon and begins to approach him. Mulder’s legs move of their own accord and he meets her halfway, taking the gun from her reluctant hand. He returns to his place against the wall and turns to face Olivia.

In one swift, unhesitating motion, he places the muzzle of the gun against his temple.

 _”NO!”_ Scully tries to run to him, to stop him, but Olivia holds out one arm without turning, and Scully’s forward motion is abruptly stopped. She’s pushed- gently, it seems- back across the room until she’s at the opposite wall. “Mulder, don’t do this!” she begs. “Whatever she’s telling you, don’t listen! Fight her!”

And he tries. He flashes back, suddenly, to a day almost two years ago, to a situation that had been almost identical to this one: Mulder, his control taken from him, a gun against his head, Scully nearby, begging him to fight back. Then, he had pulled the trigger on himself without hesitation… but this time, he does as Scully asks. He fights.

 _”Just do it,”_ Olivia croons. _”It will be over so fast. You won’t feel a thing.”_

 _But she will,_ he thinks, and god, the idea would drive him to his knees, if he weren’t being held forcibly upright. The pain she’ll be in, the guilt she’ll never be able to shake at not being able to save him. She’s screaming his name over and over, trying to free herself, trying to get to him. 

_”She may be upset at first,”_ Olivia says, _”but she’ll get over it… and after, she’ll be better off.”_ Mulder still doesn’t disagree, but again, this isn’t the way. He gathers himself, trying valiantly to throw off Olivia’s control, but she only sneers and moves closer. It’s nearly impossible to resist. He _has_ to give him.

 _I’m sorry, Scully,_ he thinks desperately, wishing he could tell her out loud. _I don’t know if there’s anything after this… but if there is, I’ll take care of Emily for you until you’re ready to join us._

And suddenly, the pressure on his arm is gone, as quickly as though a switch has been flicked, and he’s able to lower the gun, to move again. Olivia falls back, shrinking away from him. As Mulder watches, the red eyes disappear, her features re-emerge from the black mask, and her face, her human face, is fully visible to him for the first time. She looks horrified, ashamed, as though she’s suddenly become aware of the awfulness of what she’s been trying to force Mulder to do.

Her concerned, frightened expression is suddenly very familiar to Mulder, and he’s struck with the realization that whoever the father of Olivia Westphal’s baby had been, he had left no mark of resemblance on their child.

Before he can speak, Olivia all but dissolves before them, her form collapsing into a vague grey cloud that blows out of the room as though caught up in a strong wind.

Scully rushes at Mulder, snatching her gun away and taking out the clip for good measure before tossing the weapon onto the bed. She throws her arms around him, and he shakily returns the embrace.

“What happened?” she murmurs into his chest. “What made her stop?” He shakes his head, mystified.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I was begging her in my head the whole time, trying to convince her that it was wrong, that you would be hurt by losing me like this, that if she didn’t mean you any harm, she wouldn’t make me do it.”

“What’s the last thing you remember thinking before she let you go?” Scully asks. 

“I thought….” Mulder bites his lip, unsure of whether he wants to tell her or not. Any mention of the topic has, for the past month, shut her down in seconds. “I thought of Emily,” he admits. “I thought of how I would take care of her for you, if it turns out you’re right and there really is something beyond this plane of existence.” Scully looks up at him, her eyes swimming in tears.

“You thought of her?” she whispers, and he nods.

“Yeah, I did,” he says. “I guess I just… I was looking for any way I could possibly make it easier to let go, and hoping that she might be waiting for me, that I could tell her all about you and how much you loved her….” He shrugs. “Getting to see her again was the only possible good I could find in the face of so much loss.” Scully’s eyes widen suddenly, and she steps back, raising a hand to her mouth.

“Loss,” she says. “That’s the common thread.” Mulder frowns.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“The Farleys,” she says. “And the Menendezes. Two couples who saw Olivia, but weren’t harmed by her.” She looks up at Mulder. “Two couples who had lost children. The Farleys lost two children in a car crash, and the Menendezes lost their daughter to sudden infant death syndrome.” Mulder sees what Scully is getting at, and now, it’s so obvious that he could kick himself for not having figured it out before.

“Just like Olivia Westphal lost her child,” he says. He reaches out and takes Scully’s hand. “And just like you lost Emily. Olivia saw that in you, somehow: that sadness, that sense of loss, that she sympathized with. For all her malevolence in death, she doesn’t want to hurt anyone who’s suffered the same loss that she did.”

“Including you,” Scully whispers, her eyes filling with tears. “She sensed it in you, as well.” She releases his hand long enough to reach up and cup his cheek. “Because you loved her, too.”

“Of course I did, Scully,” he says, covering her hand with his own. “I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks, but you haven’t wanted to hear it. I loved her because she was a part of you.” The tears in Scully’s eyes spill over, and finally, _finally_ , she begins to cry, to truly cry, to sob the way Mulder knows she’s needed to since the moment she’d walked out of Emily’s hospital room for the last time. He pulls her to himself, cradling her head against his chest, stroking her hair as he waits it out.

“Do you have that card Gregory Pekarcik gave us?” Mulder asks, when Scully seems to have decided that she’s indulged herself enough, and is wiping the last of her tears from her cheeks. “The one with his private extension on it?”

“Yeah, I think so,” says Scully, turning to look through her purse, clearly glad for something to move on to. She takes out the card and hands it to Mulder. “What for?”

“I might have figured it out sooner if I’d ever really gotten the chance to see Olivia’s face,” he says, crossing to the phone on the nightstand and picking it up. “Let’s just hope she can see it a little more quickly.”

When Mr. Pekarcik arrives in their room, fifteen minutes later, he’s wearing a thick, plaid robe and an expression of polite confusion.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Foster?” he asks, as Mulder lets him into their room. “Is everything all right?”

“I think it might be, soon,” says Mulder, shutting the door. “But we’re going to have to ask you to please just… uh… keep an open mind.”

“An open mind?” Mr. Pekarcik is looking positively mystified now.

“Yeah,” says Mulder. “We think we might have figured out the cause of your problems… and maybe a way to solve them.”

“Mul… _Eric_ ,” says Scully, catching herself, “what makes you so sure that you can summon her? And how do we know it’s safe? We know she doesn’t want to hurt _you_ anymore, but what about Mr. Pekarcik?”

“ _Who_ wanted to hurt you?” Mr. Pekarcik asks. “And what are you talking about? Who are you summoning? Is it another guest?”

“In a manner of speaking,” says Mulder. “Though, she was a guest here _long_ before the building was ever a hotel.” He steps away from the other two and speaks loudly and clearly. “Olivia Westphal,” he calls, “show yourself.”

“Mrs. Foster,” says Mr. Pekarcik nervously, “is he all right? I know that last night must have been hard on him, and-“

“Olivia Westphal, we have what you want,” Mulder continues. “We have what was taken from you.”

“Mr. Foster, I really dont-“ He gasps suddenly as a dark flash crosses the mirror. “What was _that_?”

Before either Mulder or Scully can answer, she’s there, hovering in front of the balcony doors, watching all three of them warily. She glances at Scully, then at Mulder… and then her eyes fall on Gregory Pekarcik. Mulder holds his breath. If he’s wrong, the hotel owner is likely to be in grave danger, and he’s fairly certain that he and Scully won’t be able to protect him. Those red eyes will re-emerge and will be the last thing that this man ever sees.

But he’s not wrong.

Olivia crosses the room until she’s directly in front of Mr. Pekarcik, who is frozen in place, unable to move, his mouth hanging open in shock.

“She… she looks just like _me_ ,” he breathes. The ghost reaches out a trembling, ethereal hand, holding it inches from Mr. Pekarcik’s cheek. She lets out a single, choking sob, and draws back, looking at Mulder and Scully.

“Thank you,” she tells them, and moments later, she’s gone, in a swirl of light and fog, leaving behind a faint scent of roses.

Mr. Pekarcik turns to Mulder and Scully, his eyes practically bugging out of his head.

“What on _earth_ was that?” he demands.

“That,” says Scully, “was most likely the cause of all the terrible things that have happened here. I think you’ll find that all of that’s going to stop now.”

“You’re telling me my hotel was _haunted_?”

“‘Was’ being the operative word here,” says Mulder. Mr. Pekarcik shakes his head in amazement.

“I think I need to sit down,” he says, collapsing heavily onto the edge of the bed. He looks up at Mulder and Scully. “Who was she?” Mulder smiles.

“Someone who’s been looking for you for your entire life.”

 

————————-

 

“So they took me away from her and told her that I had _died_?”

They’re seated at a table in the empty dining room. Mr. Pekarcik has his hands wrapped around a mug of tea that Scully had insisted on brewing for them, but he’s still too much in shock to lift the cup from the saucer without shaking so much that the tea spills everywhere.

“It’s all right there in Michael Westphal’s letter,” says Mulder, gesturing to the scrapbook that lies open on the table between them.

“I read it when I pasted it in there, of course,” says Mr. Pekarcik. “I just… it never even occurred to me that _I_ was the child in question.” He shakes his head.  “I guess maybe now I know why I felt such a pull towards this place.”

“It was a different time,” says Scully quietly. “Nowadays, a single mother might get some raised eyebrows and more than a few whispers, but it’s not nearly as much of a stigma as it was then. I’m not saying it excuses what he did at _all_ , but I do think that he was genuinely concerned with his daughter’s future.”

“You’re being much kinder to him than I could ever be,” grumbles Mulder.

“Like I said, it doesn’t excuse the deception,” says Scully. “And I’m sure that he learned his lesson in the most brutal way possible when he lost his daughter to suicide.” The three sit in silence, and Mulder wonders: how would Scully have fared, in such a situation? Losing Emily had been difficult enough for her, and that had been with both his support and her mother’s, not to mention a demanding and time-consuming career that she could bury herself in whenever she needed a distraction.

But Olivia Westphal had been alone, far from her parents, in a place that Mulder strongly suspects had not been the most welcoming or supportive of environments. She had found happiness in the arrival of her son… only to have him snatched away. Would it have been better if she’d known that he had been destined for a loving home? Or would it not have made a difference?

“And you’re really FBI agents?” Mr. Pekarcik asks for the third time in the past half hour. He had asked to see their badges twice, and both times had stared at them in uncomprehending amazement.”

“We really are,” Scully assures him. “We’re sorry that we couldn’t tell you before we’d figured out what was going on.

“Because you thought I might have been responsible for the deaths that have happened here?”

“Because we thought there might be a chance that _some_ one working at the resort might have been responsible,” says Scully gently. “Not necessarily you.”

“And instead, you get to go home and tell your boss that a ghost was behind the whole thing,” chuckles Mr. Pekarcik. “It’s like a bad episode of Scooby Doo. What’s he going to say?”

“Oh, our boss is used to us turning in reports just like this one’s going to be,” says Mulder. “Our unit is primarily concerned with cases just like this one.”

“What, ghosts? The FBI investigates haunted houses?” Mr. Pekarcik’s eyebrows are raised in disbelief, but at least he’s calmed to the point where he can finally start drinking his tea.

“Not necessarily ghosts,” says Scully. “We specialize in cases that other agents haven’t been able to solve, usually because some details remain unexplainable. And sometimes….” She gives Mulder a pointed look. “Sometimes there’s a paranormal element.”

“Sometimes?” Mulder scoffs.

“And sometimes it turns out there’s a perfectly logical scientific explanation,” Scully insists.

“But not this time,” says Mulder, barely able to suppress the gleeful I-told-you-so tone of his voice.

“No, not this time,” Scully sighs. 

Mr. Pekarcik finally gives up on his tea, pushing it away. “I think I need to go to bed,” he says wearily. “I’ve had more than enough excitement for one night.” He stands, and Mulder and Scully rise as well. The hotel owner reaches out and shakes Mulder’s hand, then Scully’s. “I can’t thank you enough for this,” he says sincerely. “I honestly thought my dream of owning a hotel was over and done with. Anytime either of you want to come up here and stay for a _real_ vacation, please, let me know. You’ll have my best room, free of charge.”

“That’s very generous, Mr. Pekarcik,” says Scully. “I think we just might take you up on that. We have more than a little vacation time store up, both of us.” Mr. Pekarcik beams widely.

“Excellent,” he says. “Please feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” he tells them, waving his arm towards the double doors leading out of the dining room. “Otherwise, I’ll see you for breakfast in the morning.”

“We’ll probably be heading out very early,” says Scully. “We’ll need to get back to Washington.” Mr. Pekarcik chuckles, shaking his head ruefully.

“You won’t be going anywhere tomorrow,” he tells them. “Not unless the FBI sent you here on a snowplow. Or a dogsled. That storm out there is nowhere near over, and until it is, the plows won’t be making their way out here. But please, tell the FBI that the rest of your visit is on me, all right?” And with a bow, he leaves the restaurant, as dignified as anyone in a plaid bathrobe can possibly be. Mulder turns back to Scully, grinning.

“So… we’re stuck here,” he says. “For a couple more days, at least.” Scully answers his smile.

“Snowbound in a romantic resort getaway,” she says, stepping closer and sliding her arms around his waist. “What will we do to pass the time?” Mulder looks thoughtful.

“We could get a jump start on our report,” he suggests. “I’m sure you’d like to have it done by the time we fly home.”

“Mulder,” says Scully, warning in her voice.

“Skinner would be really impressed with us,” he continues earnestly. “Solving the case in three days? Getting the owner to foot the bill for the rest of the time we’re here? Showing up with a finished report?” He grins. “Come on, Scully, let’s get back up to our room and get started.” Scully takes his hand, tugging him towards the lobby.

“Oh, we’re going back to our room, all right,” she says, as they start out of the restaurant together. “But if you keep on insisting that we’re spending the rest of our stay writing our report….” She shakes her head at him.

“You’re always bugging me to be more responsible, Scully,” he says. “Well, this is my chance to take your advice. You take the events of the first day, and I’ll-“

“ _Mulder._ ” She gives his hand a sharp yank. “You keep this up, and Gregory Pekarcik is going to have an entirely new ghost haunting his halls.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t stay here,” says Mulder. “If I’m going to haunt anything, it’s not going to be a place; it’s going to be a person.”

“You’re saying you would haunt _me_?” asks Scully.

“Yup,” he says cheerfully. “Let’s face it, Scully. You’re never getting rid of me.” Scully smiles warmly up at him, slipping her arm around his waist.

“Good.”


End file.
